Why do I need your eyes on me?
by Azilee
Summary: Tony's dad comes to him with an investigation, causing unresolved angst to resurface. How does Tony, and the team, deal with it? Case fic. First FFN, so please don't hesitate to give advice! AU concerning DiNozzo Sr
1. Chapter 1

Hello anyone who reads this! This is my first fanfiction ever, so please tell me if it's any good or if I should just leave it at that and return to merely enjoying other people's work. I'm not really confident I like it, although I think I did alright with the bullpen banter... Anyway, please tell me what you think!

Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS, its characters or its storylines. And I'm happy I don't because I love what the people who do are doing with it!

**Chapter One**

Ziva David walked into the empty bullpen, wrapped in so many layers of clothing she could hardly bend her elbows.

_Damn American weather, _she thought. _Thank God Tony isn't here yet, or I wouldn't hear the end of it. Ninja chick afraid of a little winter air? _She mimicked his voice in her head. She could almost see the smug smirk he was sure to display if he saw ever her dressed like this.

Ziva slid behind her desk as gracefully as her clothing allowed and quickly took off her coat, scarf, hat, gloves, fleece jacket and woollen jumper, to reveal her regular work clothes: a thick grey cashmere cardigan and kaki cargo pants. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms several times before shoving some of the superfluous pieces of clothing into her bottom drawer and locking it.

_Ha, all set and without anyone interfering,_ she thought, pleased with herself for coming in early and with the way her day was beginning. That is, until something made her look up towards the director's office. Gibbs was leaning against the railing, a steaming coffee cup in his hand and smirking in very much the way she had expected Tony to.

"Cold much, Ziver?" he asked raising a mocking eyebrow.

Ziva was saved from answering by the arrival of an elevator-ful of agents, none of them belonging to the Major Case Response Team but nonetheless arguing and greeting each other loudly enough to fill the bullpen with their chatter. Ziva turned to her computer and powered it up, wondering if any of the cold cases she was assigned today would be interesting enough to keep her from wishing someone could kill another someone so that they could investigate a murder.

_Ugh Ziva, what is wrong with you, wishing somebody dead! _Ziva thought, disgusted with herself. She had come to NCIS to fight death and cease provoking it, yet there she was again. She was mercifully stopped in that line of thought by McGee, who staggered out of the elevator all cherry-cheeked and Rudolf-nosed, a huge beam on his face.

"Good morning to you Ziva!" he trumpeted while he walked into their team's space. Ziva had to laugh at his bright, excited eyes and his ruffled hair.

"Hello to you too," she answered. "May I ask why you are in such a good mood?"

"The probie is in a good mood?! Oh wait, that's gonna be good! What did you do last night Probie? Had fun with a _Probette_? Please tell me you _probed_ a real _Probette, Probie_, because I don't want to have another conversation with you about the _problem_ of the _probable_ reality of virtual avatars of _probably_ not-real people."

Ziva and McGee eyed at each other wryly. Tony was at work, on time for once, and apparently Timothy McGee wasn't the only one in a good mood that morning. They could feel their cold case day had just gotten much, much longer.

"If you must know, _To-ney_," sighed McGee,"I just happen to love this weather." He walked away from Tony and settled at his desk.

"Oh come on McAuthor, can't you do any better than that?" Tony sneered. "Nothing about the snow covering everything and making it look clean, and pure and knew? Nothing about the vivifying effect of cold air on an over-worked spirit? Hell, nothing on the link between a plunge of the cold-shrinking mercury and the decrease of air pollution? I'm disappointed, McGee, I thought that the last one at least could be expected from McMIT!" Tony cried, throwing his arms around to emphasise each question.

He turned to Ziva who was trying to glower at him and simultaneously stop the chuckle that threatened to spill at his over-dramatic burst. He gave her a stern look before turning into his full lecture mood.

" Ziva, these clichés are what makes an American an acceptable citizen and they should be uttered at least once a week in the frosty season. Think of it as our non-religious, national prayers. They are more than a tradi…" Ziva's unrestrained throaty giggle stopped him just before Gibbs' slap did, shocking him nearly as much. _I made Ziva giggle_ he thought, puzzled. That somehow made him very pleased with himself, but Gibbs' piercing stare gave him no time to dwell on that.

"I was just teaching Ziva the essentials of…" Gibbs eyes seemed to get more cutting by the second. "Right boss, I'll get to work straight away. And good morning boss." He rushed around his desk and threw off his coat and scarf haphazardly, shoved his gloves into his suit's pockets and kept on his hat. e looked He looked at the computer for a few moments, pretending to work and trying to make himself forgotten, before realising he had no idea what he should be working on. He lifted his head away from the screen to be met with Ziva and McGee's laughing stares and Gibbs' privately amused gaze.

"Um, what are we doing today boss?" he asked sheepishly.

* * *

Somewhere across town...

"Mr DiNozzo, Mr DiNozzo! Wait!" a man called, running after his boss as he left the office. He reached him, panting slightly. "Mr DiNozzo... Jenkins wasn't here today... He's the one responsible for making sure the lab is ready for testing, checking the equipment..."

"I know who he is. Why are you telling me that? Isn't it _your_ job as head of this team to manage your people?" DiNozzo Sr answered roughly.

"Yes sir. I mean, no, but... he hadn't told me he wouldn't be at work, and he's usually pretty serious about that sort of thing... and, well I'm worried about the team... the suicides... I think we should call the police" he concluded with a defiant, if cautious look.

"Mr Ealing, it is this company's policy not to interfere in its employees' life," DiNozzo Sr replied curtly. "We are not here to babysit each of you, the way you seem to want to do with your lab. Now if you will excuse me, I have an important meeting with the Department of Defence in an hour, in which I have to explain very impatient army and navy generals why _your team_ hasn't produced a single viable, large-scale manufactured MRA-76 yet!"

Ealing watched the retreating back of his arrogant boss with disgust and threw away his fear to call out :

"If you don't call law enforcement, I will"

The back stopped and turned slowly to reveal a red, furious face.

"Are you threatening me?" he growled, a snarl on his lips.

"No sir, I mean, it needs to be done sir" Ealing retreated, but not without giving his boss a daring look.

DiNozzo stared at him for a while, making him squirm under his glare, measuring him up. He sighed and gave in.

"Very well, I will take care of it. But don't you dare challenge me again, or the only thing you'll ever challenge for the rest of your life will be food coupons and your unemployment check," he spit at his employee, who was visibly shaking by now. And with that, he turned on his heels and finally left the office, seething.

* * *

A.N. If I am to continue this, I need a little help figuring what an MRA-76 is... Can anyone please give me an idea for a revolutionary, dangerous piece of military equipment? I have most of the rest of the plot figured out, but I can't seem to come up with anything that makes sense in that area...


	2. Chapter 2

A.N. Hi guys! I'm back! I can't begin to tell you how excited I was to receive those emails saying my story was added to favorites, or was on story alerts, or was reviewed… It is really incredible to think my drabbles are being read by people all around the world (531 from 42 countries up to this point to be exact!), and that some of them actually like it. I feel like jumping up and down screaming!!!

Anyway, crazy fit aside, thank you very much for your advice, it now says AU on the summary and I _will_ keep writing this story. Please keep the advice coming, I will listen to (almost) all of it.

As previously mentioned, I don't own anything even remotely NCIS related, but I don't own much of anything either, so please don't sue me, it'll cost you more money than you'll get.

* * *

**Chapter Two**

The bullpen was quiet, the three younger MCRT agents working in silence at their desk. Ziva was trying hard to focus on her cold case, which dealt with a fifteen year old murder of an elderly woman in Arlington County. It had been turned over to NCIS because she had been strangled with the dog tags of an MIA marine, but no one had ever been arrested, no connection had been found between the victim and the marine and no signs of the latter were to be found as Ziva browsed his financial and social security records. She sighed, disappointed by how ineffective her day was threatening to be.

McGee looked up from his own cold case, one about a gunnery sergeant's suspicious suicide. He was suddenly startled by the calm of his co-workers. He smirked, thinking it couldn't last. He gave them ten minutes to start getting in each other's face, fifteen to gang up to tease him. And frankly, he wouldn't mind it. He _hated_ working cold cases, the memory of the unavenged deaths bothered him more than he would ever admit. It made him face the fact that they couldn't make everything right and that some killers were just never caught. It hurt his idealised vision of NCIS. Much like in his video games, he enjoyed the simple role play of the villain and the hero, and it hurt to realise the hero wasn't infallible and the villain sometimes won. He wasn't so naive as to not realise that long before he joined NCIS, however it helped to recreate this romanticised version of his work in his writing. Actually, now that he thought about it, this was probably one of the reasons he had written _Deep Six _in which the team was always the hero and always succeeded_... _

Gibbs was watching his team from the railing near MTAC. He caught Ziva's exasperated sighs and McGee absent-minded glances around the bullpen. Tony's back was to him and he could see him alternate between working his case and playing hit-the-Taliban. He smiled to himself. He knew they'd much rather be out in the field, but seeing them calm and settled at their desks allowed him to breathe in a way open-cases did not. Not wanting to dwell on why he was so uneasy when he sent them out on missions, he turned around to visit Abby in her lab, searching his pockets for a few dollars to buy her a CafPow.

* * *

Gibbs had been listening to Abby's rambling for nearly 45 minutes when Vance called him up to his office. Planting a kiss on her cheek, he left her to her CafPow-induced hyperactivity, took the elevator to the top floor and walked straight into the Director's office, passing a blasé Cynthia.

"What do you want, Leon?" he asked as the 'Toothpick' turned away from the window to give him a stern stare.

"SecNav called. There is a case you and your team have to take, although I would have argued against it, had it been my choice, but we have a few senators pushing hard for it." He twisted his head to one side with annoyance. "Some cases hit too close to home..."

"What is it, Leon?" When he didn't answer straight away, he added impatiently, "Come on, if you need us on a case, we don't have all day!" _What's going on now?_ He thought. _What have those screwed up politicians done again?_

"As you know, the army and navy work in close cooperation with civilian arms and tactical equipment manufacturers. One of these companies, DNAE, has had an unusually high proportion of suicides and missing people in the last few weeks, which has lead some of its personnel to fear for their safety."

"How is that our jurisdiction? As you said, this is a civilian company."

"That's where the... er..._ hinky_ part starts." Vance was slightly ashamed Abby's colloquialism was the only word that seemed to fit. "The CEO of DNAE is one Anthony DiNozzo Senior, the D and N of DNAE I believe." Gibbs' eyebrows rode up to his hairline, widening his steely eyes in surprise and disbelief.

"You I don't believe in coincidences, right?"

"Yes, I know you don't, and in this instance you would be right, Gibbs," Vance sighed. "Apparently DiNozzo Sr knows all the right people, and particularly those to call to get senators to pressure SecNav into assigning this case to your team. I told him of the personal connection between MCRT and DNAE but he says his hands are tied. You have to take this case, and I have to tell you this is a direct order."

Vance rubbed his hands over his face tiredly. Sometimes he couldn't stand the political manoeuvres his job forced upon him. On such days, memories of field work on crime scenes or undercover looked remarkably appealing...

"Oh, and before you ask, you can't enquire as to the nature of the equipment the DNAE is working on. It's need to know only, and it seems the DoD has decided you don't qualify," he added reluctantly. "I'm sorry"

Gibbs stood for a moment, going over the situation in his head. He didn't really mind not being informed about the equipment; McGee could tell him anything he needed in two hours, three if the files were well secured. No, what bothered him was that he was going to shove Tony's father right in his face and ask him to be objective about it. He didn't know much about their relationship, but as far as he was aware, things were far from peachy. Tony had once told him he'd been disinherited at 12 and sent to military boarding schools from a young age. That didn't scream strong father-son bond. Hell, he'd known Tony for seven years and he'd hardly even mentioned his father. _Uh uh, this was not going to be good_ churned Gibbs' gut.

Vance watched as Gibbs' features hardened before he turned back to the door. He paused in the doorway for a second.

"I hope this bloody doesn't hurt Tony and you'd better wish so too, because if it does, I promise you all these fancy people won't be able to hide behind their pricey suits when I come for them," Gibbs threatened, meaning every word of it.

Vance didn't answer, as he couldn't very well say he thought it'd be justified, as the director of NCIS. Yep, sometimes he hated the restraints of his job. Feeling his agreement nonetheless, Gibbs stormed out of his office, worried and fuming.

* * *

Tony was having fun killing Taliban's on his computer when Ziva IM-ed him. "Gibbs!" he read, causing him to instantly jump up from his slouched position, close the game, take off his earphones, scramble for his cold-case file and slam it open.

He looked up innocently at his boss when Gibbs stopped in front of his desk, but was still met by an icy stare and a head-slap. _Well, I should have expected it, he _thought, disgruntled._ Nothing escapes the eye of the Jedi master. _What he still did not expect, however, was Gibbs walking over to Ziva and hitting her the exact same way.

"That was for warning him," he answered her startled eyes, throwing his thumb over his shoulder in Tony's direction. _Oh yeah, we really got ourselves a Jedi master._

Having restored discipline and more importantly attention, Gibbs turned to the rest of his team.

"We have a case," he declared. Before they could grab their gear, he added "Ziva, background on DNAE. McGee, find out what they're working on for the army at the moment. It's classified, so make sure you're not caught. DiNozzo, with me. Don't take your stuff." And with that, he marched to the elevator, not looking forward to the much needed conversation he was about to have there.

* * *

A.N. So there was this one review that said I shouldn't continue this story since it doesn't fit the last episode. Please know that, first of all, I'm in France and haven't seen that episode yet, and that at least 7 people enjoyed the first chapter, so I'll keep going as long as someone reads what I write and appreciates it. Till next time, take care!


	3. Chapter 3

**A.N. ** I just love receiving your reviews, but I totally understand if you don't have time to leave any. Just seeing that 700 people read the last chapter is already making me hyper! Please leave a review if you can, though. I like knowing what you like or dislike or if I've gotten something wrong or if something made you smile...

**Disclaimer:** I am not educated in firearms, weapons in general, US military or forensics. Please excuse any inconsistencies with reality, I do try to research but as some of you have pointed out it is fan_ fiction_ so I'm allowed to make a few things up! Which, incidentally, is exactly what I did for the DNAE weapon...

This chapter is dedicated to **Kakyd** who gives me great advice and reviews, and answers my questions about American culture and institutions with kindness and thoroughness.

**Chapter Three**

Gibbs sighed as the elevator doors closed. He could feel Tony's puzzlement as he stood to his left, a little behind him. He wasn't going to like that. Actually, none of them would. Well, whatever happened, Gibbs would be there for Tony, to support him but most likely to stop him from doing anything stupid or self-destructive. _Sometimes it feels like I'll never be done raising them_, he thought, before realising what word he'd used. _Uh oh, this is complicating things again. Not now, LJ, now is not the time to pile up more fatherly drama on Tony._

He reached over to the elevator's control panel and brought it to a screeching stop.

Tony chuckled nervously, wondering if he was in trouble. "You know, one of these days those brakes won't be so compliant and you could have us killed, boss."

He felt oddly like a little boy waiting in the principal's office to be told off. Although, to be honest, Gibbs was much, much more intimidating than any of the principals of his boarding schools. He ran through the last few days in his mind, looking for what could have warranted an elevator chew out.

The computer games. Well, he'd gotten a head slap for that, and that was the established punishment.

Super-gluing McGee to his toilet seat. Gibbs hadn't seen that, he'd been in MTAC all morning, plus if he did know about it, which he most likely did, being the Jedi master and all, he'd probably just smirk at it, the way he did when Tony super-glued McGee to his work supplies.

Looking through Ziva's desk. Again. Yeah, that could get him into trouble, but he didn't think Gibbs would take the pain to tell him off in the elevator. He'd probably just inform Ziva and let her deal directly with him – painfully. Come to think of it, that wasn't one of the best moves he'd ever thought up...

Giving Abby a decaf CafPow. Well, that had only been a joke and he had a real CafPow hidden behind his back, so it didn't really count. Did it?

Harassing probies. Just two days ago he'd gotten one to pick up his laundry after she'd spilled coffee on his shoes. Yep, that probably could have gotten him into trouble. Well, not with Gibbs, but with Vance, and Gibbs had just left the Director's office, so maybe Vance had told Gibbs to take care of it? That would make sense...

Tony was cut in his hypothesis-building by a question he did not expect.

"What do you know about DNAE Tony?"

_What? I'm not being yelled at?_ That completely threw him off. "Um... You just asked Ziva to look into them?" he answered, puzzled. He had no idea where this was going.

"It stands for DiNozzo Armament Enterprises," Gibbs stated, opening the file he had grabbed on Vance's desk. "It's CEO is..."

"My father," complemented Tony, disbelief sketched all over his face. "He has an _armament _company?" Tony fleetingly thought back to his cold-case, the shady suicide looking better with each passing second. "What has he done now? Why are we investigating him?"

Gibbs stiffened at the confusion and discouragement his senior agent displayed at the mention of his father's name. It sadly confirmed what he'd speculated on the state of the Junior-Senior relationship. He concealed his frustration with DiNozzo Sr and answered Tony's questions.

"He hasn't done anything, or not that we know of anyway. His company has a contract with the Department of Defence for some kind of secretive weapon, and a number of his employees have been showing up dead or went missing," he delivered in a neutral voice. "He used his connections to have our team on his case."

Tony was speechless, which was such a rare occurrence he had no idea how to snap out of it. His _father_ wanted _him_, _investigating_ on his behalf. He wasn't sure if he should be honoured he trusted him with that, or if he should give in to his suspicious instinct. The situation felt definitely hinky, but maybe it was the good kind of hinky. Maybe his father was finally interested in what he did and used this opportunity to demonstrate it. Maybe, just maybe, he wanted the best team on his case and he trusted that his son's team had to be the best... Or maybe he wanted the best team and he'd been told it was Gibbs', despite the fact that his son was on it. Tony's thoughts were reeling a thousand miles an hour, going mostly in circles, making him dizzy. Why was it that his father always had this effect on him? It was similar to dealing with Gibbs, trying to read his mind, but with at least three to four times the degree of stress.

Gibbs watched Tony anxiously. He could see him attempt to process the last information he'd given him, and by the look of his face, it was not going smoothly. He wondered if he should give him some time to go over it or pull him out of his obviously painful line of thoughts. After another minute or two spent in silent struggling on Tony's part, he opted for the second alternative.

"Hey, you ok?" he asked, gently touching his elbow. Tony looked up at him, confused.

"Why do you think he asked for us, Boss?" he demanded in a shaky voice, his eyes lost.

"I don't know, DiNozzo, why do you think?" He'd been hoping Tony could answer that question, but it was glaringly evident he couldn't. Gibbs suddenly wanted to reassure him and take it all away. "Tony, it's alright, it doesn't matter. Let's just go back to the squad room and do our job as though it was any other case. It is not your father's case, it is just another arms industry-connected murder case, do you hear me?" Gibbs had braced his hands on Tony's shoulders, staring him in the eye to convey all of his resolve to the younger agent. "We are going to walk out of the elevator, you will walk to your desk and research rival companies once McGee finds us what the hell DNAE is working on. In the meantime, go hit some Taliban's," he ended with a smile.

Tony took a deep quivering breath and answered, "Yes sir. I am fine, sir" in a poor rendition of a marine's response. It still brought a thin smile to his lips, for which Gibbs was grateful. Clasping a hand on Tony's shoulder, he turned back to the elevator's door and flipped the emergency switch. It hadn't gone better than he'd expected, but not worse either. Perhaps he really would be able to shield Tony from the father angst.

When the doors opened, Gibbs and Tony stepped out resolutely together and walked purposefully, if a little shakily on Tony's side, to their desks. Tony was met by Ziva and McGee's interrogative stares, but he ignored them to glance at Gibbs. And there, in his eyes, he thought he might just have glimpsed pride. But Gibbs was always such an enigma, he may not have seen it at all. _Bloody Jedi master._

_

* * *

  
_

Gibbs marched into autopsy, the automatic doors swinging open before him.

"Hey Ducky. Vance get you the files ? "

"Yes Jethro, but only a few minutes ago. You might consider giving me at least a few hours to go over three autopsy reports. Don't you find it interesting that isolated these poor men's death were deemed suicides, but that linked together they form a case? It reminds me of a single ant pulling at a twig which objectively doesn't in itself offer any promise of food or housing, but which, put together with thousands of other small twigs, laboriously carried by thousands of other ants, forms an intricate and remarkably organised anthill. Ah the fascinating relationship between the individual and the group, between the detail and the global picture… Jethro?" Ducky glanced around, temporarily distracted from his monologue. Finding himself alone in autopsy, he turned back to the 'suicides' files.

"Do not be offended, my dears. He is actively searching for your potential murderer, which should really excuse any abruptness in his manners and..." He paused suddenly "My, my, my, what have we here..."

* * *

McGee suddenly got up from his chair, both arms in the air and screamed a "Wooooooooooohooo" into the still squad room. Met with startled and alarmed eyes, he stood frozen for a moment before sitting back sheepishly.

"It always seems to have a cathartic effect on you," he answered Tony's unasked question. "You yell when you've got something, get everyone's attention, grow all proud, parade around and..." he wavered under Tony's decidedly Gibbs-like glare.

"You got something McGee?" Tony asked once he was certain Tim would dissolve into his chair if he could. "And Ziva, don't think I can't see you snickering over there. Stop it."

Ziva allowed herself a last, if private, snigger, before joining Tony in front of McGee's desk.

"Yeah, right, I found what DNAE's secret contract with the DoD is about." He started uneasily

"And you thought it might be a good idea to broadcast that you broke into _secure, army-related files illegally_?" Tony cut, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Way to go Probie!"

Ziva put a hand on his arm. She resented seeing McGee so uncomfortable. She understood why he was so quick to fire though, she had come across his father's name in her profiling of DNAE. While she was aware of the fact that controlling his pliable co-worker made up for his lack of control over the case and his father, it didn't mean she had to like it.

Tony felt Ziva's restraining touch and forced himself to calm down. His voice was quieter when he asked, "Well, what do they make?" refraining from using a McNickname at the last second. A shame, he really liked 'McNerdRadio'.

"Sorry Tony. It's a revolutionary kind of small missile. It can be fired by a heavy one-man weapon, not very practical in that respect, but there is one innovation that makes it incredible. The rocket locks on to its target and recognises its personal heat signature. Actually, it recognises the heat waves of a person, and these are all unique due to the fact that it depends on the subject's heart. Each heart exercises a different and precise pressure on the blood flow, making the blood from the core reach the extremities in a specific way, at a specific temperature, which the rocket recognises. The rocket can then adjust its trajectory accordingly, making it absolutely unavoidable." McGee looked excited, as he always did when discussing complicated technology, but also a little fearful. "In the wrong hands, this could be cataclysmic," he added, chilled at the mere thought of it.

Ziva had stepped around the desk to look at McGee's computer. She scrolled through it and tilted her head as she stopped the screen on a sketch of the weapon.

"It looks a little like an M136AT-4, but bigger..." she observed thoughtfully. "Although it does not seem to be a 84mm calibre..."

"Uh? Care to explain?" Tony requested.

"The AT-4! The one-shot portable anti-tank weapon. It is used by the Israeli and American forces, as well as two dozen other countries round the world!" Seeing their empty looks, she sighed. "You know, I really don't understand why Americans know so little about the weapons their own army uses. It always astonishes me. In Israel, everyone goes into the army and knows about those things!"

Tony bit back a comment about the effects of such a policy on her life and motioned for her to get back to her desk instead.

"Well Ziva, since you are so fittingly informed, you should be working on this, not McDove here. Take it to Abby, the two of you can sift through it. We don't need to learn every detail, just make sure you don't miss anything relevant to the case. Do _not_ go Ninja-crazy on this the way McGee goes techno-crazy when we let him into a high tech lab. Oh, and give Timmy your files on DNAE. He can continue that," Tony ended with a chuckle as McGee's face fell. _Looks like I got back at him for screaming like me, in the end!_

_

* * *

  
_

Behind the staircase, Gibbs snapped his phone shut. DiNozzo was teasing his co-workers and giving orders. _He'll be fine, _he thought, relieved.

* * *

A.N. Haha! I looked up "nerd radio" on Google to find an offensive nickname Tony could call McGee, and there _actually is_ a radio called that! It is focused on mangas, video games and rock music. Not that these are necessarily nerdy.


	4. Chapter 4

A.N. Hi. So this chapter is on the shorter side and I'm not really happy about how the last scene turned out, but I thought you guys deserved an update so here it is! I like my Abby though.

Disclaimer: I don't own much and definitely NOT NCIS

This chapter is dedicated to Kakyd again. Think I can fit a trip to Kerala and Tamil Nadu into the story? Nah didn't think so either. Would've been fun, though.

**Chapter Four**

Ziva smiled as the elevator doors slid open. Trust Abby to have Brain Matter boom all the way down the hall. _She'll get complains again, Vance will send her an official looking letter and Gibbs will smoothe things out_, she thought with an odd gooey feeling in her chest. The regularity of it made her feel so... so at home, one thing she wasn't used to and had certainly never trained for. Or with.

"Hi Abby!" she yelled, walking into the lab. In there, the music wasn't so much an auditory as a sensory experience; the waves of sounds vibrated in the air, hit her body and reverberated in her ribcage. She had to laugh when she spotted Abby. The lovable Goth was jumping – dancing? – around on her platform boots, her pigtails crooked, her eyes closed, arms flowing to the music. She looked like she was in some kind of trance. Abby, unexpected, soft, endearing, funny, caring, unique Abby was being the archetype of her own self. Ziva sighed and walked over to her friend, reluctant to break her happy moment.

"Ziva!" Abby exclaimed with a smile as soon as Ziva touch her arm. She turned the music down before giving Ziva a stern look. "You know, you really shouldn't sneak up on people like that, one of these days one of us is going to have a heart attack. Oh, Ducky! Please tell me you don't sneak up on Ducky! He's not getting any younger, you know, and... Wait, you can't sneak up on Ducky, the autopsy doors make too much noise. Pfiu, I'm so relieved. You can sneak up on Vance though, I'd like to see that, it'd be fun." She paused for a second, catching her breath. "Why are you here? Not that I don't want you here, quite the opposite actually, but I know bossman has all of you working on cold cases and he doesn't usually allow you guys down here when he does, which is probably really smart since otherwise we'd just all be here not working, but still I like it better when my favourite team can come and visit me, because it gets lonely down in Labby sometimes, but don't tell anyone I told you that, it'd just get back to Vance and I really don't want another assistant, the last one was so freaky I couldn't sleep for three weeks and the CafPow machine was empty, but then my friend Nadia made me go and see a shaman she knows and he was burning all these herbs, which got me allergies and then I had to... Why are you here?" she asked again with a puzzled look on her face.

"It seems you have not spoken with anyone in a long time Abby," Ziva observed in a neutral voice, at odds with her amused expression.

"I know. Well I spoke to Gibbs this morning, but apart from that, no one came to visit," she whined.

"Well, Abby, I need your help as a ballistics expert to analyse data about a new weapon. McGee should have sent it via e-mail. And it's, er, confidential, so we need to be careful with it."

"Yep, here it is," Abby confirmed, checking her computer. "Confidential? What did he hack this time? FBI? CIA? DoD? Interpol?" she asked, excited.

"DNAE, DiNozzo Armament Enterprises," Ziva answered grimly.

"DiNozzo as in our DiNozzo? As in Tony DiNozzo?"

"As in Anthony DiNozzo _Senior_"

"Ouch. How's Tony?"Abby's eyes were filled with concern. "He and his dad aren't very close, right?"

"I do not know, he and Gibbs had a talk in the elevator and he was shaky after that, but he seems better now, mocking McGee and bossing us around when Gibbs is not there," Ziva answered matter-of-factly. She was uncomfortable discussing her co-workers' weaknesses, even with Abby. It made her feel like she was betraying him somehow. "Shall we get to work, now?" she suggested to change the subject.

Sensing her uneasiness, Abby let it go. "Certainly, my dear ninja friend, you have one ballistics forensics expert _extraordinaire_ at your service," she bowed, sweeping down an imaginary hat. "Let's get weapon-crazy!"

* * *

The elevator dinged. McGee couldn't see it from where he sat, but he could see Tony who had looked up at the sound and paled visibly a second later. McGee had no time to speculate as a confident, grey-haired man came into view. He held a striking resemblance to Tony, albeit older and more heavy-featured. Tony sprung up and shook his hand, still flustered and pale. McGee was quite taken aback by his demeanour, used as he was to witness Tony's over-powering ego.

"Hello son." Anthony DiNozzo Senior greeted him.

Tony was startled by the warmth in his voice. It did not fit in with any of his memories with his father, or with the established cannon of his father's behaviour towards him.

"Hi," he managed to answer. "I didn't know you were in town."

"Oh come on, Junior, did you really think I'd pass out on watching my son lead an investigation?" Senior asked candidly.

_Um, yeah_, Tony thought wryly. _You never came to my football games, to my high school graduation, to my ceremony of introduction to the police corps, you didn't even come when I had the pneumonic plague. Can you blame me for not expecting your visit this time? _He was however acutely aware that such thought wouldn't be well received by his father. He cleared his throat, racking his brain for something more appropriate to say when he was saved by McGee who bravely stepped in, sensing his colleague's uneasiness.

"Hello, I'm Special Agent McGee," he introduced himself, holding out his hand to DiNozzo Senior. It's a pleasure to meet you sir." He delivered the standard polite line with a professional smile.

"Mcgee!" Senior exclaimed with easy familiarity, shaking the offered hand. "The pleasure is all mine. Tony didn't tell me he had such charming co-workers. Any female members on the team as well?"

"Yes. Ziva. Well, Mossad Liaison Officer David to you," Tony answered. "And I'm not leading the investigation, my boss, Special agent Gibbs is. I'm just on the_ team _conducting the investigation."

"Oh, semantics, semantics, son! I know you must be a great asset to this team and I'm sure you'll solve this case in no time. At least I hope you will, 'cause I've got another meeting with the DoD on Friday and I need all this nonsense to be over by then. You think you can do that for your old man?"

McGee's eyes darted between the two DiNozzo's. He could tell Tony was unsettled by his father's easy-going chatter. _Where's Gibbs when we need him?_ he thought desperately, feeling way out of his depth. _What am I supposed to do with an intimidated Tony? _Just as he was about to assure Senior they'd do their best to solve the case in a timely manner, he glimpsed Gibbs stepping out of MTAC, his ever-present coffe cup clasped in his hand.

"We'll try. Ah, here is Gibbs. Let me introduce him to you, Mr DiNozzo." He led him along the high windows and up the staircase while Tony fell into his chair with a huff. _That's just wrong. _McGee gave up. _Tony never behaves like this. We are sooo screwed._

Gibbs registered McGee's uncomfortable look as an older version of Tony stepped towards him. _Must remind Tony to keep exercising as he gets older. Oops, finished coffee cup number four already. Need some more. _He shook DiNozzo's hand firmly.

"Special Agent Gibbs. I presume you're Tony's father?"

"Absolutely. Why, is he giving you any trouble?" joked Senior.

"He's a great agent," _Really don't want to go there with him right now_. "Since you're here, Mr DiNozzo, would you please follow me to a conference room, I have a few questions to ask you."

* * *

A.N. Please review if you can. It provides me with great encouragement. And my story-traffic thing says that people from all kinds of interesting countries read it, but I only get American and British reviews (that I absolutely love, don't get me wrong) So people from Myanmar, Israel, Kenya, Korea and so on, don't be shy!


	5. Chapter 5

A.N. Here is chapter five. I am pretty down today, partly because I'm going back to school tomorrow. I won't be able to update nearly as often, so please be patient and don't give up on me. I will get this story finished, if only because I owe it to you.

The other thing that makes me unbelievably sad is what is happening in Haïti. If you are religious, please pray for all the poor souls trapped in these dramatic events.

Chapter Five

It had been a long, tiring day. The cold cases were long forgotten and team Gibbs was exhausted. They had spent all day on desk work and Gibbs could see they were nearing their limits. Ziva was still down with Abby, McGee was huffing through the over-abundant data on DNAE and Tony hadn't drifted from his exploration of rival companies to play a single smuggled video game. That had to reflect negatively on his state of mind. Since Ducky hadn't yet determined that any of the suicides were murders, they didn't even have grounds to open an official case yet either. Gibbs sighed and decided to let them free for the night.

"DiNozzo, McGee, go home," he ordered into the silence bullpen. "Tony, go tell Ziva and Abby to stop working too. We can pick up in the morning."

The two agents were surprised but grateful for the reprieve. Things had quietened down since DiNozzo Sr had left a few hours ago, but Tony still somehow felt crushed by his presence. Working on this case had done nothing to alleviate this feeling. He grabbed his gun and badge, shrugged on his coat and hung his scarf around his neck in a hurry. Checking that McGee was ready to go too, he walked over to the elevator and waited until the younger agent was in as well to press the buttons for Abby's lab and the car park.

McGee wasn't used to such solicitude and it told him how unsettled Tony was. He however didn't know how to express his support; a hug was definitely out of the question; voicing his concern would only make Tony more uncomfortable and probably push him into denial. He settled for putting his hand on his shoulder, just to let him know he wasn't alone.

Tony's back stiffened for a second before he relaxed under the friendly touch. _I'm being comforted by _McGee. _Should I be worried? Ugh, what the hell. It feels good._

The doors dinged and opened onto the car park. McGee gave Tony's shoulder a squeeze before letting go and stepping out. "I'll see you tomorrow. Take care Tony."

Tony was grateful for his understated concern. He really didn't feel like dealing with fussy, heart-felt attention. Which was probably what he was about to get from Abby, come to think of it. He sighed and braced himself as the elevator continued its descent.

Ziva and Abby paused in their work as the elevator dinged the arrival of someone to the lab's floor. They looked at the doorway expectantly, tired out of their wits by all the weapon mumbo-jumbo (Abby's words) they had spent the last hours studying. The moment Tony appeared, Abby launched herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around him and nearly toppling both of them over.

"Oh my God Tony I've been wanting to see you all day! Why haven't you come down? How are you? How is it going with your dad?" That_ is exactly the reason I didn't come to see you, Abby. _"Is it hard working on his case? I mean, I know you guys aren't close and all, but are you totally antagonised or just a bit disconnected? The research they're doing is amazing, you know. Although I'm not sure I'd like my parents to be involved in weapons deals, not that I have any reason to worry about that, but you know…" She paused for a second, out of breath.

Ziva took the opportunity to step in.

"Abby."

"What?"

"Abby, let him go. He can't breathe," she said kindly.

"Oh." She obeyed sheepishly as Tony mouthed a thank you to Ziva over her shoulder. "I just do it because care, you know."

"I know, and I love you for it. Now, Gibbs says it's time to go home, so grab your things, and run for it!"

Ziva gathered her files and stocked them in a neat pile on Abby's desk while the forensics expert turned off her babies and put on her black embroidered velvet coat.

"I have to get my belongings from upstairs," said Ziva. "Don't wait for me, I'll see both of you tomorrow."

Tony nodded reluctantly. He didn't feel like being alone tonight. Ziva glanced at Abby, who was still busy tangling herself in a shawl at the other end of the lab, and whispered to him, "Movie at my place?"

He smiled, relieved. "Sure, I'd like that. I'll meet you there."

As she made her way upstairs, Ziva pondered on the events of the day. The case and his father's visit had been hard on Tony, especially since he was the king of denial and procrastination and usually avoided dealing with painful or difficult emotional issues altogether. _Ha, _she thought bitterly. _Who am I to talk about healthy parent-child relationship? _Come to think of it, McGee was the only one on the team who could have given them any advice in that area. Even Gibbs had only recently reconnected with his father, but they were still far from close-sewn. Or was it close-knit? Damn idioms. _Well, at least neither Tony's nor Gibb's father tried to kill them by sending them on suicide missions. _She shivered at the thought she hadn't seen coming. _Talk about denial, _she thought sardonically.

* * *

When Ziva got into her apartment, Tony was already in the kitchen putting together a homemade pizza. She raised an eyebrow at him while she took off her outdoors clothes.

"What? You can't teach me how to pick locks and not expect me to make good use of that skill. And don't tell me you're not happy I'm making a DiNozzo's special genuine Italian pizza. I wouldn't believe it. Everybody loooves DiNozzo's Special." He flashed her his patented thousand-watts DiNozzo grin.

She had to smile back. "Fine. I won't say it. But don't _you_ expect to pick my lock so easily next time."

"A challenge? Don't tempt me Dah-veed, you know I like a challenge."

She just shook her head and laughed.

"Are you finished with the pizza yet?" she asked a moment later, when he had piled half the world's food supply onto the thin layer of pastry. "You know, we could probably feed a small country with that much food!"

He grinned. "Well, I haven't eaten all day, so prepare yourself to be horrified by the DiNozzo hunger. Actually, I don't think I can wait 'til the pizza's cooked, do you have some nibbles?"

"Nibbles?" she was puzzled.

" A bite, a crumb, titbits." She looked just as confused. He sighed. "A snack, Zee-vah!"

"Oh, yes, I have _touts_."

It was Tony's turn to be lost. "Touts?"

"They are dry Iranian fruits that I bought from a little shop down the road. They are very good. I discovered it on a long-term mission in Iran and I have kept eating them since." She presented him with a bag of the small, dry, greyish fruit. He took one gingerly, not wanting to refuse out of politeness, but wishing he could. He chewed on it and found it had a delicate sweet flavour.

"What do you call this thing again? It's actually pretty good."

"Touts. Now take the bag and go set up the film. You chose a good one, yes?"

"Of course, Zee-vah. Only the best for you," he answered with a teasing smile as he exited the kitchen.

He put the DVD in, turned the TV on and looked around for something to do. He decided he had to use the restroom before the film started. Once he was done he walked into the bathroom to wash his hands. It felt odd, being in Ziva's bathroom. A glance in the hallway told him she was still fixing them one of her fancy salads. _Coast clear_. He started to rummage through her products, looking for anything interesting. TheBodyShop almond body butter. Make up remover. Nail polish remover. Moisturiser. Hand cream. TheBodyShop almond shampoo and body wash. Deodorant. Perfume. _Perfume?_ This was becoming interesting. Tony picked up the small brown bottle carefully and read the label. _Fille en aiguilles_,_ Paris. _He grinned._ Trust Ziva to wear cargo pants and expensive French perfume. _He inhaled the sharp fragrance. Pine and exotic wood, nothing girly and flowery. Strong yet delicate. Pure Ziva.

* * *

Tony was well rested and entered the squad room with a bounce in his step the next morning. Ziva and he had watched _Strangers on a Train,_ one of his all times favourite, and chatted lightly about meaningless things. They'd drunk a few glasses of Israeli red wine so Tony had slept on the couch. It had been a remarkably pleasant and relaxing evening.

* * *

Ducky wasn't surprised to see Jethro enter autopsy that morning. After all, although his rational, scientific mind rejected Abigail's black magic theory, he had to admit the man always appeared at the most opportune times.

"Hello, Jethro. You'll be happy to learn, I've made quite a leap forward in this case by possibly linking two other deaths. I requested the autopsy reports of all the demises in DNAE during the last five months, even those classified as natural, and these two poor technicians have caught my eye. You see, their blood analysis shows an elevated rate of dopamine and histamine. On its own, none of these factors would have any repercussion on my analysis of a cause of death, but together they seem suspicious to me."Ducky paused, looking slightly embarrassed.

"Well, Ducky, what does it mean?"

"I'm afraid, Jethro, that it means I need to re-examine the bodies so that Abigail and I can analyse them again. And that you, poor fellow, will have to get their loved ones' authorisation."

* * *

A.N. The perfume, _Fille en aiguilles_, actually exists. The name is a pun on an idiom, but I don't think I can translate it – I'm like Ziva with idioms. Perhaps another French reader can?

And many thanks to Kakyd for giving me a "casual movie night" film for Tony and Ziva to watch.

Please review!


	6. Chapter 6

A.N. I don't own NCIS. Duh

Thank you for all your reviews, they really make my days much brighter. Please keep them coming!

Nothing really happens in this chapter, it's just me enjoying playing around in the characters' heads. I just hope you enjoy it as well.

**Chapter Six**

Ziva and Tony jumped up when Gibbs marched into the bullpen. They'd been busily discussing the influence of Hitchcock's films in the history of cinema, which Tony insisted on calling the 'Seventh Art'. The conversation had become quite passionate and McGee was highly entertained by their argument. They knew, however, that Gibbs wouldn't find it as amusing.

"What do you got?" he asked gruffly.

"Abby and I have finished sifting through the data and there is one abnormality that..."

"Get her up here. DiNozzo?" Ziva hurried away to the basement while he continued interrogating her co-workers

"I found the company which was trying to obtain the arms deal DNAE won. It's called Avon Grüden and its headquarters are in New-York. The bank accounts seem to have some irregularities and there were some suspect money transfers, so I sent the files to Accountancy. One of the guys down there owes me one."

"Is your father still in town?" By the sound of his voice, Gibbs definitely meant business

"Um... I guess so, he didn't tell me," Tony answered reluctantly.

"You know how to reach him?" Gibbs fired back.

"I , uh, have an old cell-phone number. And he usually stays at the Four Seasons when he comes to D.C., I could try that as well."

"Do it. I want to ask him what he knows about Avon Grüden." Gibbs turned sharply on his heels and left the squad-room in a terrible mood. He'd had to call the families of the two DNAE employees, and it had gone as badly as he'd predicted, the two widows sobbing uncontrollably and asking him why he wanted to unearth their husbands, if something was wrong, if he really thought they had been killed, who had potentially murdered them and generally wanting answers he just didn't have. All the while crying hysterically. He really needed another cup of very, very strong coffee. No, scratch that, he needed a very, very strong _Irish_ coffee. But he couldn't have that; he was on the damn job_. Trying to find the perpetrator of murders we don't even know for sure happened. Which is why Ducky wants me to drag the bodies of two dead husbands to this building._ Ugh, coffee would have to do, but only if it was so dark it could make a bucket of bleach black.

* * *

Tony picked up the phone. That was one phone call he didn't want to make_. If Ziva knew that I'd be screwed,_ he thought. _Me, Tony, not wanting to talk on the phone instead of doing another boring desk job. I'd never hear the end of it_.

He dialled the number, having read it in his cell phone. He listened anxiously for his father's voice.

"DiNozzo." The voice was all too familiar.

"Hi Dad, it's Tony. Gibbs asked..."

"Wait a second Tony," his father cut.

"Dad! I need you to..." He stopped when he heard his father's laughter at the end of the line, away from his phone. He knew from experience that this could take a while. His father ignoring his calls brought back memories he didn't brood over often. More than that it brought back a feeling he'd been fighting or fleeing from for as long as he could remember. It was a strange swirl of emotions, anxiety, apprehension and self-deprecation mixed in his guts with an incessant underlying fear, making them churn around painfully. He frowned. He had hoped his dad wouldn't have that effect on him anymore. The effect the idea of being a disappointment, of not being loved, of being chucked away like a piece of garbage had on him. His fear of abandonment hadn't really left him, it seemed. It had just gone under the surface in the comfortable NCIS environment, ready to spring back up at the slightest opportunity.

If he'd told Gibbs about that, and if Gibbs had been the touchy-feely-talks kind of guy, Gibbs could have told him he knew all about it. He could see it in Tony's eyes every time he thought he'd failed his boss, he could read it in his tense, hunched back after a case gone wrong, he could find it lurching when Tony looked to him for reassurance, for guidance, or for approval. He could have shared his theory that Tony's player act was just a way to leave women before they could dump him and before it could hurt. He could also have told him that every time he saw that dread of rejection, he wanted to give him one of his typical head-slaps and pull him into a crushing hug to squeeze all the undermining self-doubt out of his senior agent. They could have said all of that, but Tony was a DiNozzo, and 'DiNozzos don't have weaknesses' and Gibbs was a man of fewer words than Charlie Chaplin, and of much, much less body-language too.

"Tony! What is it my boy? Miss your old man already?" His father's cheerful voice brought him back to the phone he was holding absent-mindedly to his ear. That merriness did _not_ match his childhood memories and threw him off a little.

"Well Gibbs wants you to come in, we have more questions to ask you."

"What, straight away? I have a meeting in an hour, but I suppose if this is urgent I could postpone it... _Is _it urgent?"

_Haha, no, Gibbs just loves to wait. Try it and you'll see. _His father had never postponed anything for him. But he supposed a possible-multiple murders case would catch his attention more effectively than a hockey game. "It is. We have found a competing company and we want to... You know what, just come as soon as possible and we'll deal with it when you arrive."

"All right my boy, I'll take the helicopter and hurry over to NCIS. You do have a helipad, right? Of course you have, you're a federal agency. Well make sure they clear it for us. I'll be there in an hour. And Tony, it was nice talking to you on the phone. We really should do it more often." And with that, he hung up.

Tony sat for a second, motionless in his chair. Ziva, who'd come back with Abby during his call watched him curiously while Abby chatted away to McGee. _Talk more often? Does he mean that, or is it just something he said? He usually hardly listens when I call and shows no interest whatsoever. Is he making an effort to reach out to me?_ Ziva turned back to her Goth friend, answered one of her questions ("Where's Gibbs?" "At the coffee shop I think") and went to sit on the edge of Tony's desk to ask him a question of her own.

"Who was that on the phone?"

"My dad. Gibbs wanted him to come in, I called, and he's currently on his way in a helicopter," he said. "This is surreal. And now I have to go clear the _High Government Officials-only_ helipad for my father."

"Oh, please allow me," Ziva replied. She could at least take that burden from him. To answer his questioning stare, she added, "It's been a while since the guys up there have been told how to treat a lady with courtesy. I heard that they had bothered Agent Claire Whilbay the other day; I thought I might teach them that lesson again. Plus, I miss using my knife," she finished with an intimidating smile.

Tony half-whistled between his teeth. "I wouldn't want to be in their shoes, with a ninja like you on the loose, Zee-vah. But if gets me that landing authorisation... Just don't break them, don't mess them up too badly and make sure you're clear of the surveillance cameras," he joked. "Oh, and if anyone asks, this conversation never happened," he added in a forties-spy movie voice.

Ziva shot him an imperturbable look and pouted. "Well if you take all the fun out of it..."

"All right, all right, you can ruffle them up, but please leave them with at least an eye and their right hand each. And, don't get caught, or we'll never walk out of Alcatraz. Although I'm sure you've already killed your way out of much more secure buildings, and I could probably talk my way out of prison too. But it'd still be unpleasant, so don't get caught. And wear a ninja mask so that they can't recognise you!"

Ziva got up and bent down over the desk to his level, to look at him with elevator eyes. _Wow, unquestionably an orange light situation, _he swallowed with difficulty. "Do you have a mask for me?" When he didn't answer straight away, she gave a throaty chuckle and started towards the elevators. "I'll be done before Gibbs get back from his coffee run!" she called over her shoulder. _Mission accomplished, _she thought, satisfied. She'd undeniably succeeded in making Tony relax and forget about his father, and if the look on his face when she left was anything to go by, he wouldn't be thinking about that for quite a while...

* * *

A.N. Please take a few minutes to review if you can. I want to know if you'd rather have short, fairly regular updates or longer not-so-regular ones.


	7. Chapter 7

A.N. Here goes another chapter! I really shouldn't be writing this much, but it's my birthday and I wanted to post another chapter. And it's quite a long one for me too. So read and review! Remember, constructive critics are more than welcome.

And many thanks to the amazing **Kakyd**, once again, who proof-read this chapter for me, knidly fitting it in her hectic schedule.

Disclaimer: I still don't own NCIS. But it _is _my birthday, so maybe I will later today!

**Chapter Seven**

Ziva David entered the bullpen with a satisfied smirk on her face. She'd really enjoyed using her Mossad skills on the rooftops, even if it was only a fraction of what she used to do. She had wrapped those over-confident men around her little finger – _rosie_, Abby called it, or_ pinkie_ or something – in no time, using just a few glares, a small number of well hinted threats and trivial movements of her knifed hand. Oh, and one of her trade-mark menacing Ziva-smiles, but that didn't really count since Mossad hadn't taught her that, she'd discovered it with her siblings while trying to out-do the others' 'creepy smiles'. Ha, these men weren't likely to bother, or even look at another woman for quite some time. Yes, this was definitely putting her in a good mood.

"The helipad is cleared and I had them call your father's mixer. He will be here in forty minutes," she informed Tony, evidently pleased with herself. Abby moved to stand next to Tony's desk too, wanting her share of office conversations, still waiting for Gibbs. Ziva didn't understand the confused look her report brought to Tony's face.

"Mixer? Oh!" he laughed slightly. "You mean chopper, but close enough Zee-vah. I just won't let you near my kitchen in the near future." While her misused idioms always amused him, this time he didn't feel sufficiently relaxed to indulge himself by really teasing her. He tried anyway. "So they didn't see you, did they? You found a mask?"

Abby looked puzzled. "A mask? Why would she need a mask?"

"Oh, I was on a little mission. And don't worry about that, Tony; they are so scared by now they would probably believe you if you told them that killing me would only make me come back from the dead to drag them there with me. NCIS needs to employ people with more..." she scrambled for the right word, "more... gusto!" she finished in Italian, knowing he'd understand.

Abby laughed. She loved Ziva's falsely menacing stances. Or simply menacing stances, at least when she knew they couldn't be directed at her, because a scary Ziva could sometimes be really, well, scary when it was aimed at you.

"Ah, well, that's why they have you, Abby and me, strong figures for the public image of the agency, while people like McGee are left to do the heavy lifting." Tony replied. "And we get paid better too!" It surprised him, but this bantering was oddly comforting, like slipping back into a warm bed.

"Hey!" McGee objected from his desk. He'd been busy pretending not to be listening and was trying to concentrate on his work.

"Ha, and he takes the bait and swallows the fishing rod and the fisherman with it!" Tony shouted in his best sportscaster's voice. "I _knew _you were eavesdropping, McLongEars, aren't you ashamed of yourself? You know, you're still a _probationary _agent, so you'd better be careful around your Senior Agent."

"Tony, it's not eavesdropping if you're talking at full-voice level in the middle of the bullpen, three meters away from me," McGee responded with an exasperated sigh. Truth be told, he was glad Tony was more like his old self, yesterday's Tony had been more than a little unsettling. Of course, it also meant that he'd been able to do his job quietly for most of the day, which was always a good thing. But still, a not-unhappy Tony was making him less restless.

Gibbs chose that moment to come back from his coffee run. "When did you turn metric, McGee, what's wrong with our feet, miles and pounds?"

"Well, the metric system is the international way of measuring things, boss. The scientists who invented it decided that a quarter of the earth's circumference would be 10 000 meters, and that's how they defined the length of a meter. It's much better than the feet and miles, really, because..." McGee was about to continue with his passionate lecture when he noticed Gibbs looking at him blankly, Tony smirking behind him and Ziva elbowing Tony in the stomach. Only Abby was listening with interest, although she clearly already knew the story. "... But you don't want to know about that, boss." McGee had turned on odd shade of purple-y red. "Abby's got something for you."

Gibbs gave him one last, long, steely stare before turning to the forensic scientist. She was already grinning widely, glad to have something – in her opinion – exciting to give Gibbs. "Abby?"

"Ziva and I found something hinky in the DNAE files. The weapon-that-shall-not be named-due-to-its-_secretness_ is a pretty standard firearm, it looks like a fairly regular anti-tank weapon."

"What kind?"

"It's almost like an M136AT-4, Gibbs," answered Ziva. He nodded for them to continue. _At least _he _knows what an __M136AT-4 is._

"But it's much, much better than that, Gibbs!" Abby squealed excitedly. "It's the projectile that's amazing. It can lock onto its prey. The bullet, I mean! Or rather missile, I mean it's too big to be a bullet, and it does have electronics inside it, so it has to be a kind of missile, but a small missile, no bigger than your two fists put together," she started muttering to herself.

"Abby," Gibbs stopped her. He needed straight, rapid answers. He had a nasty gut-feeling and wanted the case over as soon as possible. "How does it lock onto its victim?"

"It is something to do with recognising the person's heat waves' signatures, but you do not really need to know about that, Gibbs," Ziva answered for Abby. "What we have found was that something is missing." She looked to Abby to allow her to continue.

"It's the fuel. There's a small chamber in the missile that should be filled with fuel to enable all the electronics and mini-propellers to function properly. In the files, it says the fuel will be tertio-butyl(1,3)dimethylaminhexopropan-1-ol, but that's impossible. Tertio-butyl(1,3)dimethylaminhexopropan-1-ol is like the Holy Grail of combustible materials, Gibbs. Half a vodka-glass of it is supposed to create enough energy to heat a house for two month. It'd be, like, the most powerful thing on earth, apart from nuclear energy. If it existed, because no one has ever figured out how to produce it yet, since at least four of the twenty-odd reaction intermediates are highly unstable and dangerous. There are at least half a dozen teams around the world, trying to make a thimble of the super-stuff, trying to prove it's even possible to make it."

"But if they were going to use for their missile thing, someone must have made it, right?"

"I guess so. But why didn't we hear anything about it? If I succeeded in making tertio-butyl(1,3)dimethylaminhexopropan-1-ol a reality, I'd tell everyone, be in every science magazine, go on TV, sell it a thousand times, become immensely rich, rescue a hundred dogs from shelters –"

"No you wouldn't, Abby," Tony interrupted. "You'd give it to Green Peace or something."

Abby looked crest-fallen. "Oh. Yeah, I would, wouldn't I?"

Gibbs rolled his eyes and turned to Tony. "You reached you father yet?"

"Yeah he'll be here in thirty minutes. Took the chopper too, Ziva had to go make sure the guys up there will let him land."

Gibbs hesitated between smirking at the scene he could well imagine with Ziva not-so-gently 'convincing' the helipad thugs to ignore agency regulations, or scowling at DiNozzo Senior's obviously inconsiderate behaviour. He settled for a _squirk_, his face twisting between a scowl and a smirk, puzzling his agents, and looked at McGee.

"Still reading all you can find on DNAE?"

"Yes boss. Haven't found anything in the personnel files that indicate a link between the different potential victims apart from the fact that they all worked at DNAE, of course. They didn't know each other, they were of different cultural origins and religious beliefs, they lived in different neighbourhoods. They even worked in different labs, on different projects, although I think these projects could all be part of the secret weapon development plan, but I don't have anything to prove that yet."

"Keep looking. Abby, help him. Wait. Abby, the weapon can't be used without that fuel thing, right?"

"Absolutely. The missiles would just be regular missiles, only heavier so they probably wouldn't even hit their targets."

"Good. DiNozzo, get back to work on the rival companies. Ziva, try to find the tertio-toodahloo thing , check if any of the labs working on it have had leaks, suspicious suicides or disappearances. And call me when DiNozzo Senior gets here."

Gibbs shook his head; something felt wrong with this case, but he couldn't pinpoint it. He strode out, discouraged. He needed a place to think and try and figure out what the whole mess was, and he knew exactly where to go. The elevator.

* * *

Anthony DiNozzo Jr was waiting for his father's helicopter to finish its landing, braced against the cold chopper-induced wind. He had to brace himself against a wall to bear the force of the strong air masses. _Ziva must be half my weight and she's not even bothered by the wind. How the hell does she do that? _The aircraft finally landed and he decided that particular ninja mystery could wait until his father was gone.

His father hopped to the ground with an ease that surprised him, considering his age and corpulence. Then again, he had always granted a lot of importance to acting young and trendy, and Tony wasn't shocked he wouldn't let a mere physical condition slow him down.

Senior walked briskly towards his son, his hand on his silk tie to stop it from hitting his face, and took off his expensive sunglasses. "Hello again, son. Let's get out of the wind, shall we?" he screamed through the over-bearing surrounding noise. Without waiting for an answer, he headed for the door to the building.

Tony rolled his eyes at Ziva as they followed him, wanting as always to atone for his father's rudeness. Although his good-natured greeting to him had been remarkably and unusually nice...

They caught up with him on the landing where he was waiting for the elevator. "Dad," Tony started, gesturing to Ziva. "This is Officer Ziva David. She's working on this case too."

"Why, hello Officer! My, I wonder how any work gets done around here with such a pretty lady on the team." He winked. _Ugh_, thought Tony, _I can't believe he just did that_. "I hope she doesn't prove too much of a distraction to you, son," he laughed. "If he gives you any trouble at all, my dear, just give me a call. I'll suspend his allowance!"

Ziva smiled back at him, keeping her professional mask on, but Tony's eyes narrowed to a slit. He couldn't _stand_ his father flirting with her. Before he could say anything, however, Ziva answered his father's uncalled-for compliments.

"He is no trouble at all, sir, and he knows I could kill him with a shirt button and make it look like an accident, so I think I can defend myself if he ever does act up too much," she stuck up to her partner while retaining her pleasant demeanour.

DiNozzo Sr firmly kept the wide smile on his face but it was quickly turning into one of the forced, uncertain smiles people often had when first told of Ziva's special skills. _A shirt button? How could anyone be killed with a shirt button? She's kidding, right?_

Tony chuckled, relieved to see Ziva being... well being her typical self, and happy to see his usually well-composed, over-confident father squirm a little.

"Don't worry, Dad, I also know where she hides all her knives in her clothes, so I'll be careful and although I'll try not to get killed by my partner anytime soon, I may actually win if she attempts to stab me."

"Ha! You wish, Tony," Ziva snorted back playfully.

Senior swallowed painfully. This woman was making him seriously nervous. That was unusual for him, to be nervous because of a gorgeous young woman. As a matter of fact, that type of women generally made him feel the opposite of anxious; he was supposed to be the predator, the older man with the devastating smile and the over-flowing bank account who could win over anyone. He _wasn't_ supposed to be intimidated!

"Is that lift coming or not?" he asked, hitting the button several times.

Tony and Ziva exchanged a smirk at the abrupt change in the conversation. "We should probably take the stairs. Ziva, call Gibbs?" He steered his father into the staircase, letting the door slam shut behind them.

Ziva flipped open her phone and dialled Gibbs' number – _never save phone numbers in your cell, Ziva, you never know who might find them and use them to pressure you_. She was startled when it rang next to her, in the wall... of the lift. The elevator doors dinged open and Gibbs looked out at her, his phone dangling in his hand. "You done tormenting the DiNozzo's, Ziva?" he sneered.

_Of course Gibbs heard the whole thing_, Ziva thought_. I shouldn't even be surprised, he always does. Ha, the elevator trick is a new one though. Tony's going to love it._

"Never," she smiled.

Gibbs' lips tugged up a bit. "Come on Ziva, get in. We've got work to do downstairs. And if you're good, I'll give you _one _of the DiNozzos to pester."


	8. Chapter 8

**A.N.** This chapter is dedicated to the amazing Kakyd who allows me to write sentences like 'Gotta go, I have to call the nuns in India before it's too late' (I really do call nuns in India, in case you're wondering) or have random conversations about peas on a daily basis.

**Disclaimer:** My birthday came and went, and predictably I still don't own NCIS.

**Chapter Eigth**

Gibbs and Ziva walked up to their team's space in the bullpen, where McGee was chatting lightly with Senior while Tony chipped in every so often. Gibbs went straight to business, not interested in any of the polite niceties he was sure DiNozzo Sr was an expert at.

"Mr DiNozzo, what do you know about Avon Grüden?"

Senior was visibly put off-guards by the abrupt question. "Uh, they work in the same field as DNAE, armament development mainly. They tried to get the contract we now have with the DoD, but obviously we won that particular competition, although there have been times in the past when they have been more successful than us. Why, have they been experiencing similar… difficulties?"

"No, we think they may be causing your _difficulties_," Gibbs answered in the same rough tone as before. Senior looked confused and fleetingly scared before he regained his countenance.

"Are you sure? I mean, I was sort of threatened by Avon Grüden before, but I never took it seriously. I thought it was just friendly competition, you know, just sportsmen trying to throw each other off balance, it's just how the game is."

"That _game_ as you called it, may have caused your employees their lives, Mr DiNozzo," Gibbs fired back sharply. "I need you to write a deposition concerning these threats, where, when, how, anything you can remember. Tell us anything else about Avon Grüden that could be even remotely relevant, especially the links between that company and DNAE. Any questions?"

DiNozzo Sr shook his head, unaccustomed to being addressed with so little deference. _DiNozzos don't stay speechless, _Tony thought with bitterness and an ironic smile, his inside voice taking on the dogmatic tone of his childhood's father. _They always have a witty answer ready._ His father, who had always looked so impressive to him in his powerful business class environment – where he undoubtedly _was_ influential – somehow didn't seem as over-bearing when Ziva toyed with him or Gibbs snapped at him. All it took was a change in settings to make him lose his… Tony struggled to find the word to describe his father's behaviour towards him and indeed all of those who surrounded him. Arrogance was probably the one. Throughout his entire childhood he'd seen his father looking at everyone as though he was far, far above them and graced them with his presence, his opinions, his time only as an unearned favour that they should be grateful for. And somehow it worked with almost everybody. It certainly worked with his son who, years after being disinherited and with abundant life experience as a federal agent and cop, still felt crushed and diminished by his very presence. Or at least he had until a few minutes ago. Tony suddenly experienced a surge of soft compassion for the man. He was so visibly out of his depth, being put back in his place and played with, that Tony couldn't help but feel sorry for him, the man who had no other way to deal with his entourage than charming, humiliating and scolding.

"McGee, take him to a conference room and make sure he writes down everything," Gibbs ordered curtly.

"No, I'll take him," Tony stepped in. Seeing Gibbs frown, he added hesitantly, "… if that's alright with you, boss?"

Gibbs eyed him for a while, sizing him up, before giving him a short nod. "Alright. Don't let him forget anything."

* * *

Tony led Senior into the earthy conference room, holding two water bottles in one of his hands and a clipboard in the other.

"Here you go. Sit anywhere you want around the table and start writing, dad," he said, his professional tone softening on the last word. "You can start with the way Avon Grüden and your company competed to get the contract. Anyway, you know what to do, just write everything Gibbs told you to write, plus anything else you remember."

Tony watched as his father acknowledged his advice with a nod and sat himself at one end of the large, oval table.

* * *

"Ah, Jethro, thank you for coming. If you could just wait a minute while I wash my hands and look for those autopsy reports... The young man you see on that table, while unrelated to your case, has a rather interesting story. He was fished out of the Potomac a few hours ago, with no apparent sign of trauma but a line of..." Ducky rambled as he carefully peeled off his bloody gloves and washed his hands and arms up to the elbow. He turned back to Gibbs to continue, enthralled by his story. "...intriguing, infected, recently tattooed butterflies spiralling down his neck and torso. Unusual, if I may say so. It reminds me of a summer in Edinburgh when I was almost persuaded by fairly devious schoolmates to –"

"Ducky? My autopsy reports?" Gibbs asked his old friend with impatient fondness. Ducky's rambling fits were endearing but he really didn't have the time – or the patience – to deal with one of his preciously phrased digressions.

"Ah, yes, of course. Here they are. It turns out my suspicions were right about our two victims. They were injected in the neck with noradrenalin, also known as norepinephrine. It is a neurotransmitter and stress hormone which underlies the fight-or-flight response, directly increasing heart rate, triggering the release of glucose from energy stores, and increasing blood flow to skeletal muscle. However, when used as a drug as it was in this case, it increases blood pressure and causes the baroreceptor reflex, which results in a drop in heart rate called reflex bradycardia. This is the real cause of death of these poor souls."

Taking in Gibbs' amused smirk and raised eyebrow, Ducky chuckled, realizing most of his explanation had been lost on the former marine.

"Induced heart-attacks, Jethro! _That_ is what caused their demise." He clarified, allowing himself a modest, if somewhat triumphant smile. "Quite a clever way to kill too, if I may say so. Most MEs would have ruled this out as natural deaths."

"And two MEs did before you, Ducky. Good job." Jethro called over his shoulder as he strode out of the cold room to the elevators.

* * *

A.N. Here you go, that's it for today. A few of you said they'd rather have short updates than wait for longer chapters, so here goes a short chapter. Thank you for sticking with me and still reading this story.

Please still review!


	9. Chapter 9

A.N. I'm back! I'm sorry, I know it's been a few days, but I haven't watched any TV in two weeks and have to fight my way through mountains of genetics and biophysics and embryology to be able to write 300 words a day. Those two things aren't helping my inspiration. I know, excuses, excuses, but I'm having a hard time writing and keeping in character. Although I guess that if you're still reading, I must be still doing something right!

I have to thank Kakyd for beta-ing this chapter, especially the idioms part. I have a Ziva-like relationship with idioms and having a native speaker read over this really helps. I actually said 'it's raining cats and dogs' to French friends a couple of times, and you should have seen their faces! If you're interested, we say 'it's raining ropes' in French, which makes a lot more sense to me.

Disclaimer: Much like every single writer on this site, I don't own NCIS or any other show, film, book, manga etc, as I'm sure you all know. So why do we all write disclaimers?

Please review when you're done. It's always an incentive to neglect my studies and write more and faster!

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

Tony gathered the pages his father had written with his expensive Mont-Blanc fountain pen (_A good pen will follow you all your life, son. It's a good investment_) and left him with a probie to bring Gibbs the result of his harmonious scribbling. His father and he hadn't had a big heartfelt, life-altering discussion or anything, but just sitting silently and peacefully in the same room was already a big step for Tony. He couldn't remember the last time it had happened, and it felt better than he expected it to.

Gibbs skimmed through the neat, slanted handwriting.

"Alright. There isn't enough here for a warrant, but we still need to ask that CEO a few questions. Tony, take Ziva and try to convince him to come in for questioning – gently, Ziva. If he won't come, just question him there. You know what to ask."

Ziva looked up from her computer, perking up at the thought of leaving NCIS for possibly a few hours, even if it was only to pick up a suspect. She knew desk work was necessary and inevitable, but sometimes she just needed to be in the field, stretching her muscles and doing what she did best. Driving was one of the things she did best, she suddenly thought with a slight smile.

Gibbs saw it and immediately added to the list of orders: "And you make sure you're the one driving, DiNozzo," earning him a snide grin from Tony and a disappointed shrug from Ziva. _Oh well, at least they'll make it back alive._

_

* * *

  
_

"So Zee-vah, you haven't made any snide comment about peas in a pod yet," Tony started as they pulled out of the Navy yard. If the frown on her face was any indication, she resented not being allowed to drive and he hoped using an idiom he was fairly certain she wasn't familiar with would help take her mind off her frustration.

Well he was right about her being irritated. What, she was allowed to use her Mossad skills to get an illegal helicopter landing authorization, but she couldn't be trusted to drive? _Ugh, these men!_ She seethed. Sometimes it felt like they surrounded her with cotton balls and then screamed any time she got close to bumping into one of those harmless fluffy useless padding. They were seriously making her go crazy.

However, she could recognize an olive branch when it was handed to her, and if Tony could detach himself from his father-issues to offer one, so could she.

She breathed out silently but deeply, willing the negative feelings away with the air. She even allowed herself a smirk when she heard her Abby mind-voice repeating _Positive thoughts, positive thoughts_ as she often did when a case or tiredness was getting to her. _Should I be worried I even _have_ an Abby mind-voice? This is probably the first time I know people well enough to imagine them speaking in my head._

"Peas in a pot? What are you talking about Tony? Why would I comment about growing vegetables?" She played along with his game, although she knew what the idiom meant. Or at least she thought she did.

" Peas in a _pod_, Zee-vah, not a pot!" He rolled his eyes, pleased she had responded the way he hoped she would. A silent Ziva was not a happy one, and he didn't want to be responsible for unleashing an unhappy ninja onto a probably incompliant suspect. Even if, come to think of it, that could be rather entertaining… "A pod is the kind of shell the peas come in. You know, fresh peas, not the dull green canned ones that you can buy in the store. How is it that frozen peas and canned peas aren't the same colour anyway? I mean, the fresh peas are really bright green and –"

"Tony! You are rambling like Ducky," Ziva cut in. _I can make an effort, but I am _not_ having a conversation on the colour of peas with him._

"Right. When you say peas in a pod, it means two people who look a lot alike or are are virtually indistinguishable. Like, I don't know, twins, or two frat brothers, or..."

"Or someone and their father?" Ziva finished, sensing that maybe this was about more than idiom-butchering.

"Yeah..." he answered, his tone uncertain. "So, do you think I'm like my father?" He kept his eyes straight ahead on the road, fearing her answer but at the same time acutely aware that there wasn't a right answer to that question.

"Yes, I think you look a lot like him, Tony. You will have to be careful with your beer belly when you are older, yes?"

He snorted, but she could tell her weak attempt at deflecting the real question with humour hadn't been as effective as she'd wished. His back was still tense and his knuckles white against the dark leather of the wheel. She sighed. _What does he need me to say? _ she thought. _What would be the right thing to say? _She knew there wasn't was just going to have to give him a true answer.

"I don't know him very well, Tony. He seems like a bright, talkative person and you are often like that. You also share a sense of humour, from what I have heard, and also a taste in women?" Tony stayed silent and stiff, not liking what he was hearing but perceiving the truth in her comparison. _ So I am like my father in the end, _he thought sourly.

"But I think you are more grown up than him sometimes, when you want to be. And you care a lot more about the people around you. He does not care about a lot of people, does he? You do, and you are loyal and reliable, which he does not appear to be." Ziva was getting increasingly uncomfortable with the situation; giving out compliments was not something she was used to. "You are like... peas from different pods, yes?" she finished with an awkward simile, trying to make him smile.

He did, albeit weakly. "Similar but different, eh?" he asked.

"Yes. Same kind of vegetable but different plants." She stuck with the simile, since it seemed to de-dramatise the subject. "Or maybe peas from different varieties, Wando and Green Arrow."

He was confused. "What did you just say? I'm Wando? Is that some kind of Israeli insult? Because it sort of sounds like an Italian swearword, but I know all of those, trust me."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm sure you do. Wando and Green Arrow are pea varieties, Tony."

"Oh." Tony smiled wider. Peas from different pods; he could live with that. Maybe there was a right answer after all. "Hey, how do you so much about peas anyway? I mean, do you grow some in a flowerpot on your balcony or something? Like your own personal version of legal marijuana?" he laughed at the thought.

_Ugh, enough with the peas already_, thought Ziva. _What is it with this obsession with peas?_ She was however relieved to see him relax and move on to a lighter subject – _I must have said something right in all that uncomfortable rambling_ – so she answered his question with a falsely strained voice.

"No, Tony, my father sent me to the Kibbutz for the holidays almost every year when I was a child, and we learned to work the land, manage the water system, grow wheat, olive trees, vegetables, including peas. This is how the desert was turned into Israel. My father felt it was important to know where we came from, so I know how to care for plants."

"Ziva working in the fields. Ha! Who would have thought the fearless Ziva had a green thumb, eh?" Tony seemed to be enjoying himself no end, probably imagining her in a somewhat indecent shepherdess' outfit.

_Oh yes, this is going to be a long drive._ She was however slightly awed, as usual, by the way he seemed able to just flip the switch of his emotions in a second to lock away his painful thoughts and fall into the easy and witty pattern of teasing and mocking. "Green thumb, Tony?"

* * *

Tony parked his precious mustang just outside the Avon Grüden building, flashing his badge impatiently at the security guard who attempted to protest – with little luck. "Ah, I love being a fed," he whispered to Ziva with a sly grin, as the hired muscled stood disgruntled by the car while they walked into the lobby of the sleek chrome-and-glass tower.

She smirked and bit back her retort. She had a feeling _I know, it's all about the cars and the girls, yes Tony? _just wasn't what he needed to hear with his present insecurities about resembling his father; and if the quick background check she'd done that morning was accurate, car and sex was a lot of what DiNozzo Sr was about.

The lobby was large and airy, well lit, but possessed the steel clinical feel a lot of formal business companies' offices held. It was too clean and minimalist and absolutely soul-less. Tony shuddered. If he'd followed his father's footsteps, he'd probably have ended up in a similar place and he decided he just wouldn't have survived it.

They walked up to a the large steel sleek reception desk in the middle of the wide space, to be greeted by a bored-looking receptionist who looked up at them with expressionless eyes.

"Welcome to Avon Grüden's main Washington office, what may I do for you?" she recited.

Tony was about to make a provocative comment to see if he could snap her out of her weary stupor, but Ziva elbowed him neatly in the ribs when he opened his mouth. He kept it open, but only a _oof_ came out as his lungs emptied suddenly.

Ziva smirked and got straight to business, something she _knew_ Tony wasn't about to do. "We are here to see your CEO, Mr Karl Blumenfield," she announced, determined.

"Do you have an appointment?" the receptionist frowned, looking at her boss's agenda software. It stated very clearly that he was currently, and for the rest of the afternoon, in a bi-annual executive committee meeting ; the phrase 'do not disturb' tagged it as a top priority situation. She didn't want to be responsible of disobeying that request.

"That's our appointment," Tony replied, shoving his badge in her face. Ziva rolled her eyes. That was twice in three minutes. The elbow had made him irritable and he wasn't accepting any secretary-screening nonsense. "We're Federal Agents from NCIS and as my partner has already told you, we're here to see Mr Blumenfield. Now."

The mousy woman had the good grace to look nervous and turned to her phone. "Yes sir. Uh, take the third elevator to your right and go to the top floor. I'll get Mr Blumenfield to meet you in his office; let me just call him and tell him you're here." By the time she picked up the phone, the agent and the officer were already halfway across the entrance hall, Tony complaining about Ziva's 'unnecessary attack' on him, and Ziva ignoring his antics as best she could. The hostess sighed. That was not a phone call she was looking forward to.

* * *

A.N. Ha, Kakyd, I fit in the peas!

Well, if any of you know why I'm so obsessed with peas at the moment, please review, Ziva and I are dying to know. And if you don't, please review anyway, I also welcome enthusiastic comments, constructive criticism and random thoughts!


	10. Chapter 10

**A.N. **I know this is short, sorry. I'm having a little trouble concentrating on writing... I feel kind of stuck, to tell you the truth. Any suggestions to get this story back on track?

**Disclaimer**: I don't own NCIS. Shocker, I know.

**Chapter Ten**

Back in the bullpen, McGee frowned at his screen. He'd been doing (even) more research on DNAE and Avon Grüden in his coworkers' absence. Although the quiet, empty squad room was undoubtedly an environment more favorable to concentration and focused work than the flippant atmosphere it usually possessed, he oddly missed the easy banter and friendly mocking. But not in this instance. The information he'd just uncovered wasn't going to make Gibbs happy. Or Tony. Certainly not Tony.

McGee sighed. He wasn't presumptuous enough to compare his growing uneasiness with Gibbs' famous and efficient gut feeling, but something just didn't feel right in that case and he thought he might have just found the tip of the iceberg. Now all they had to do was keep digging, but first he needed to double and triple check the lead. Those were not accusations he was willing to make before he was absolutely certain there was no other rational explanation. And where rationality and logic were concerned, he could think of no one who could help him better than Abby Scuito. He gathered up a couple of printed files, forwarded many more to the lab and heavily made his way down as well. Abby was another person this wouldn't make happy.

* * *

Ziva and Tony found Blumenfield's office easily –_ Piece of cake, Zee-vah, we just have to look for the biggest, most arrogant office chair and we'll find the top of the Avon Grüden food chain_ – and while Tony rambled away on how boring working in that company must be, Ziva started to discreetly perform a superficial search of the room. She had already assessed the escape routes she could use to get out of the wide, clear room and the location of the emergency stairwells. She was now looking at diplomas and award hung on the walls and picking up a few things here and there. To anyone looking in, she may have seemed to be absent-mindedly fingering random objects, the way one would when unexpectedly left unattended in someone else's living room, examining their bookshelves and glancing at their holiday pictures.

_Uhm, interesting_, she thought as she studied the framed photography which sat in the middle of the large desk. It depicted an athletic middle aged man, his hair white but his face still relatively young and only slightly lined. He held a slightly younger smiling woman around the waist and his other hand rested on the laughing shoulder of a teenage boy. _Our suspect is a family man._

"Would you mind putting that down?" asked an irritated voice from the door. Ziva glanced up to see the man from the photograph, only his blue eyes weren't laughing and his stance was aggressive. Ziva gave him an unimpressed look, her face expressionless in a way she knew made people uncomfortable.

"Certainly. You have a beautiful family, Mr Blumenfield," she answered calmly, settling the frame back were she'd found it, angling it towards what Tony would have called the 'master seat'.

"Who are you? Linda said you were feds," he continued gruffly, somewhat intimidated but determined to be just as hostile as he could.

Tony walked up to him, stepping around the glass conference table and the uncomfortable business couch, to hand him his badge and ID. Ziva just continued to stare at him impassively, making their suspects nervous. "I'm Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, and this is my partner Officer Ziva David. We're from NCIS which stands for-"

"Naval Criminal Investigative Service, I know, I've worked with the Navy often enough to know what NCIS is," Blumenfield interrupted impatiently. "What does NCIS want? I was in an important meeting and I would appreci-"

It was Ziva's turn to cut in. "We're here to take you back to our headquarters in the Navy yard, to ask you a few questions." Tony cringed. He knew what kind of man Blumenfield was. The kind of man who responded to ego stroking and flattery, sense of honour and self-worth, but not to straight, un-compliment-wrapped questioning requests. The kind of man his father had been in his childhood, as were his father's friends and most of Tony's male role models for the first years of his life. _No wonder I'm so screwed up_, thought Tony.

As he'd predicted, Blumenfield straightened up to glare despising at her from above. "I would never follow you there and you know it. I have an office-full of lawyers just across the hall and I only need-" he stopped suddenly, his head snapping back to Tony. "DiNozzo? Are you in any way related to DNAE's CEO?" His voice was now more than annoyed, it was suspicious and harsh. His eyes had narrowed to slits as he searched for a physical resemblance between the agent he had in front of him and his well-known competitor. He evidently found it, since he snarled "I won't be interrogated by an agent who may have a personal prejudice against me. Did you know his father and I run competing companies, ma'am?"

It was Ziva's turn to glare. That arrogant, incompliant man had basically questioned Tony's loyalty and objectivity, _and_ he'd called her ma'am. She allowed herself a second to fantasise several ways of shoving and cuffing him, gathered her self-control with reluctance but rapidity, and hissed at Blumenfeild, "We are special agents, working for the US Navy on an investigation. You do not get to question our motives or requests, you comply and you follow us. Now. And don't call me ma'am. Ever." _If you want to keep one of your limbs_, she added in her head, but this definitely wasn't the right time to utter threats, if her interlocutor turning an interesting puce was any indication.

Blumenfield slammed the door and marched to his desk. "I'm calling my lawyers."

Tony couldn't believe he hadn't anticipated that his last name would be recognised by the businessman. No one had. Or maybe Gibbs had and for some reason had decided it'd make him a fit for this assignment? In any case, Tony knew he had to step in quickly if he was to prevent Ziva from antagonising their suspect into a barricade of Armani suits-wearing lawyers.

"Wo-oh, no need to call, sir." People like Blumenfield always liked to be called sir. It made them feel powerful. "Tell you what, I'll just sit quietly and take notes, while my partner asks you a few questions here, in your office. I won't interfere."

Blumenfield sized him up for a moment, hesitating, before setting the phone back in its cradle and relaxing his hand muscles around it. He really didn't want to involve a pack of money-starving lawyers, especially at the moment. "Alright," he replied.

"Good," Tony replied with a forced smile. "Please give me minute to converse with Officer David, and then you two can start."

He grabbed a Ziva's stiff arm and pulled her out in the corridor. She dropped her cool exterior for a second, showing pure exasperation. "What?" she snapped.

He breathed in deep, to stop himself from snapping back at her, and ran his hand though his mussed up hair. _I'm the Senior Agent. I'm the Senior Agent_. "Ziva, you are going to walk back into that room, put your best blank Mossad mask back on, super glue it if you have to, and question him with as much professional courtesy as you can muster."

"I know my job, Tony," Ziva scoffed. She hated this, being ordered around by Tony.

"I know you do, but we need to do this right and if he needs to be flattered into being questioned, then we're going to smooth talk him into giving us answers for Gibbs. Okay?"

Ziva sighed. She knew Tony had a point, even though she was still thinking up four new ways to kill Blumenfield per minute. "Fine." She breathed in and relaxed her features before arranging them in a rigid and artificial smile. "Happy?"

Tony grinned back. He knew she could and would do better and her antics amused him. "Very," he answered, before opening the door to let her back in, tipping an imaginary hat to her with mock severity. "Shall we start, Mr Blumenfield?"

* * *

**A.N. **There you go. Please review if you have a minute to spare!


	11. Chapter 11

A.N. So I noticed I hadn't mentioned something really important in a while : I love my reviewers, especially those of you who review regularly – you know who you are. You make me happy, and a happy Az is often inspired to write more! I was so stuck before, I had to force and push myself to write the last chapter, and this one just flowed out. So thank you. And those of you who don't review, thank them too, you owe them this chapter!

Disclaimer: I own NCIS. No, not really. See, non-American people also use sarcasm.

**Chapter Eleven**

Tony sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. This interrogation was going nowhere and fast. He really couldn't blame Ziva for it; being all nice and courteous had never made stuck-up, obscenely self-assured CEOs spill their guts or their dirty little secrets to law enforcement agents. Ziva was trying to go for the cunning make-you-back step-into-the-trip-wire-you-just-laid approach, basically trying to get him to say something incriminating to point out any and all contradictions. She was good at it too, asking unexpected questions that Blumenfield didn't have time to think about before answering; leaving him no time to brace himself or get his stories straight. All the while with the professional smile he knew she could hold for hours. It hadn't yielded any results yet though. _This isn't working…_ _I wonder how it would be going if Ziva was doing this the Mossad way_. He tried to picture it and shuddered. _Maybe I don't want to know._

Tony's phone suddenly chirped loudly, startling him out of his daze. He quickly patted down several pockets before locating the strident object and flipping it open as Ziva and Blumenfield stopped tap dancing around one another and stared at him curiously.

"DiNozzo," he announced in the curt way all of Team Gibbs answered the phone; all business and efficiency.

"DiNozzo, make up some excuse and get back here with Ziva" Gibbs' voice ordered. "I don't want Blumenfield to be suspicious, so make it look good. And hurry up." He hung up before Tony had a chance to ask him what was going on. It wasn't unusual for Gibbs to not answer any question related to the case, but it was unlike him to not provide some kind of briefing when interrupting an interrogation. And it made Tony's gut twist with a painful knot of dull discomfort.

"Ziva, they found the woman we were looking for," he improvised. When she raised a puzzled eyebrow, he ploughed on, staring her insistently in the eye to make her go along with the ride. "You know, the General's missing wife? Apparently, the General _forgot_ to tell us they had a marriage-ending fight yesterday night and she just stormed off. Looks like he just wanted NCIS to locate her for him. He's probably going to be court-marshalled or something," he finished with a shrug. Ziva had a frown on her face that screamed_ I can't believe that man wasted our precious resources that way_, which he expected from the _always prepared_ Mossad Officer, and Mr Blumenfield's mouth was slightly open, betraying his surprise at the whole story. _Oh yeah. He totally bought it. I am sooo good!_

"I'm just glad she's alright, but the fact that this man, who is in the top of the military hierarchy, has little enough honour to shamelessly…" Ziva's voice trailed away as she shook her head. She was waiting for Tony's lead, wondering if that was a new interrogation technique.

"I know. Anyway, this means the case is closed, at least on our side. The legal department and JAG are going to have a field day with the General's case. Well, Mr Blumenfield, sorry for wasting your time, and thank you for agreeing to meet us." He shot a meaningful glance at Ziva's coat, gloves and scarf, which she'd thrown on the back of the uncomfortable couch nearly an hour earlier. He couldn't believe she wore all of that, plus all of the jumpers and pullovers she was buried under. _Not now DiNozzo, now is not the time to bug her about that!_

Ziva grabbed the content of her winter-in-DC survival pack – courtesy of one sympathetic Abby Scuito – and extended a hand towards Blumenfield.

Blumenfield shook her hand quickly, willing his features not to show any of the relief that swept through him. "My pleasure," was his formal reply, revealing a lifetime in the diplomatic world of business deals. "The elevator is to the left, press G for Ground floor and you'll be near your car in a matter of minutes. And, er, please don't threaten any of my personnel. I already have a few complaints on working conditions on the burner, and I wouldn't want any other employee to feel entitled to the same kind of attention," he finished with a conspirator's smile.

Tony looked at him with disgust, but Ziva just smiled in her most wolf-like, scary manner, the smile she sported when she knew she'd caught someone out, thought up something enjoyable to use her upper-hand and knew there was no way they were wriggling out of it. "Certainly Mr Blumenfield. Have a good day, sir," she said in her most professional tone.

She and Tony spun around and exited the wide office.

* * *

"Oh come _on_ Tony, you know I would never have actually hurt him or even threatened him," Ziva complained from the passenger's seat. "You can't use that as an excuse for not letting me drive!"

She'd _literally _not threatened the security guard, but _had_ walked out of the building to sit on Tony's Mustang's hood, pulling her backup weapon out of its ankle holster, laying it down with three foldable knives and a few small throwing knives on the car's metal shell, before removing pepper spray and cuffs from one of her cargo pants' pockets; all the while enjoying the guard's reaction from the corner of her eyes. His frozen form must have satisfied her, since she'd refrained from adding her SIG to the small but impressive pile of arms.

"Fine, crazy Mary Poppins' bag, what about _Gibbs told me not to let you drive_ as an excuse?" He rolled his eyes before realising they were more needed on the road than staring into his skull.

Ziva sighed. There was no way she was questioning an order and Tony –and Gibbs – knew it. "Did you just compare me to a bag, Tony? I know you love your Walt Disney, but I could be offended, you know."

"It's Mary Poppins' bag, it's got all those things in it, everything anyone could ever need, even a freaking coat-rack! It's awesome. And then of course there's that Dick Van Dyke chim'chimney scene on the roof at night, classic. Man, that had me dancing and jumping around the house for weeks after I first saw it; and sliding down on the stairs' banister." He paused suddenly, before he could ramble any further. "Wait a minute. You haven't told anyone about my Walt Disneys and me, have you?" he asked suspiciously. "Because a deal's a deal, David, and you shou-"

"I haven't told anyone, Tony," she reassured him with a mocking grin.

"And you're not taping this conversation?"

"No"

"Oh. Good." He paused for a second, gathering his thoughts. "Anyway, Mary Poppins came out in 1964, and of course I wasn't even born back then, but it created quite a stir because Julie Andrews who plays the one and only Magic Nanny won an Oscar for Best Actress and Dick Van Dyke, my favourite jack-of-all-trades, had a conflicting schedule so he almost didn't make the cast, but then..."

* * *

Back at NCIS McGee was anxiously waiting for his co-workers in front of the elevator, his head snapping up every time it dinged and his shoulders slumping when it didn't reveal Ziva and Tony. He had to tell Tony before Gibbs did, Tony wouldn't want Gibbs to see how this news affected him. Boy was he sorry to have to announce that though. He almost wished he hadn't figured it out. But Abby was adamant, there wasn't any mistake and now he was left with the unpleasant but necessary task of reading in DiNozzo.

Just as he was about to give in and wait for them at his desk, the elevator's doors opened again, letting an arguing pair step out. McGee thought he heard something about Mary Poppins, but surely that wasn't right? In any case, they were so engrossed in their conversation they almost walked into him, Ziva preventing Tony from falling over with a steadying hand as they stopped abruptly in front of him.

"Going somewhere McGeek?" Tony asked.

Tim sighed. "No Tony, I'm here to read you in." He paused, unsure as to how to go about it.

"Well McStutter, spit it out, why did we have to leave our suspect in the middle of questioning and drag our charming behinds over here ASAP?"

McGee swallowed. "I received the financial reports you requested on DNAE, and did some researching of my own on Avon Grüden's funds, and found something." _Oh boy, he's going to hate me. _"Your dad owns the trust fund which owns the trust fund which...after a lot of financial tweaking owns Avon Grüden," he finished quickly.

Tony was motionless, staring intensely at McGee. "My father owns Avon Grüden?"

"Yes Tony. Gibbs has him down in interrogation right now." McGee cringed, expecting an outburst. It didn't come. Tony simply stepped around him and to his desk, put his gun and badge in his top drawer and sat down heavily. _This shouldn't surprise me._

_

* * *

  
_

**To Kakyd**: huge thanks for correcting my impulsive English in this chapter. Most people think being bilingual means you speak two languages. It doesn't. It means you have a bigger dictionary from which you can only use half of the words when writing/speaking to someone. Which is cool, because it enables me to write this, but also greatly annoying when I know exactly what word I want to use in a language and am speaking in the other.

Oh, et si vous voulez me laisser un commentaire en français (je sais que j'ai des lecteurs français, mais pas encore de _review _de votre part) n'hésitez pas!

Ends rambling.


	12. Chapter 12

**A.N. **Hey guys! It's been a whole week already, and time flew by so fast I wasn't even aware of the fact that I hadn't been writing much. Nothing much happens in this chapter, just nice character exploration scenes, because I can and (hopefully) we all love it. Enjoy it!

Don't own NCIS. No, believe me, I don't.

Thanks to Kakyd for helping me with a few words and proofing the rest of them.

**Chapter**** Twelve**

Forensics expert extraordinaire Abby Scuito was sitting on one of her lab's high stools, her back turned to her computers, shoulders hunched and absent-mindedly chewing on one black varnished nail. She wore an anxious frown as her body curled protectively around Bert the hippo.

"You'll see Bert, no need to worry, Tony is strong. He can work through this. I know you think he's all soft and goofy and all, but he's not. I mean, he is, and I love it, but he's also strong and determined and sincere, so he can do it. I know he can. And we're all here for him too, you and me and Ziva, Timmy, Gibbs, Ducky… Ducky is always so good with people, you remember that time when I didn't feel good because my sister had moved and I couldn't see my nieces as often anymore? He was great. And you, you're always so good at making people laugh, Bert, without even trying. You're a natural, and that's a compliment. Do you think I should call the nuns to ask them to pray another rosary for him? I know, I know, we don't usually do that kind of stuff, but Tony's part Italian, so he's probably a Catholic and a little extra prayer never hurt anyone, right Bert?"

Bert answered with the only sound he had at his disposal, but Abby thought it sounded like an agreeing fart.

"Okay, we'll do that, but not before Timmy comes down like he promised to tell us how it went. Should we be worried he isn't here yet? I could check the security cameras to see how long ago Ziva and Tony came back. It's not really hacking if it's my own agency is it? Oh my god! What if they aren't back yet? What if it's because they got hurt by that money bag or his thugs? Bert! I can't lose one of them!" Abby stood up suddenly, loudly setting Bert down on the table. "I have to call Besthesda right now. And call Gibbs! Where did I put my car k-"

Ding. Abby spun around on her platform boots, leaving a smudge of plastic on her otherwise pristine floor. "Timmy! Where were you? Are they alright? Are they in hospital? I should have known this was going to happen, none of you have been hurt in a while now, so it was only a matter of time before -"

"Abby," McGee tried with a tired voice.

"-one of you got sent back to coma-land. Or loopy-land. Or inviting-white-light-land. Or–"

"Abby!" McGee cut in with a determined frown, causing Abby to stop pacing and stare at him wide-eyed. "We're all alright; no one shot at us or tried to harm Ziva and Tony. They got back fifteen minutes ago."

"Oh." She blinked. "You're sure?"

"Yes Abby, I'm sure," McGee replied firmly, before shrieking a surprised "Ow!" when she lunged at him and punched him in the shoulder. "What was that for?!" he questioned indignantly as he rubbed feeling back in the sensitive spot.

"Why didn't you tell me that earlier McGee? Bert and I have been going crazy with worry! You have no idea what we've been imagining, really scary, realistic scenarios. And did you tell Tony? What did he say? Is he mad at us?" Her pale features went from murderous to apprehensive once more.

McGee sighed and decided it was safer – for his second shoulder and really most of his body – to ignore the first question and move on to her concern for Tony. "I told him about his father, and it was really weird, Abs. He just didn't react. He didn't yell or look hurt or disappointed, he didn't make an inappropriate joke of it. He didn't even use it to give me a McNickname. I even wore my special writer's turtle-neck as a distraction, and he doesn't seem to have noticed. He just went and sat at his desk and I watched him for fifteen minutes but he just sat there doing nothing, not reacting."

Abby was dismayed. "Oh no. This is bad. This is worse than if he shouted and yelled. And… Wait a minute, you left him by himself in his… condition?" She narrowed her eyes at McGee in her best angry-tiger-mum impersonation.

"What? No of course not, Ziva's with him!" McGee protested.

"Oh great, that's so much better, McGee," Abby answered sarcastically, shaking her head at his foolishness. "Because Ziva is the most touchy-feely, emotion-connected, heart-felt discussions versed person in this building. Timmy! As much as I love Ziva, I don't think her anger management skills are the most effective there is. She's all 'compartmentalize and shove it away, go hit a punching bag or a perp if it gets too much' and that is NOT what Tony should be doing right now!"

McGee was horrified. How had he not seen this? _Oh no, Ziva's going to find him someone to kill, it'll probably be a bad guy, but still, they could be found out and arrested and taken away from the team and then...What if I have to investigate them with Gibbs? I don't think I can. I can't investigate my co-workers, I'd just let them go and then _I'll_ be thrown out of NCIS too..._ McGee's face took on a frown of intense discomfort._ STOP! Snap out of it, Tim. Ziva won't do that, she's too smart. Don't let Abby get into your head, one of you needs to be calm here. Or at least relatively calm. _Apparently_ calm should do. _"Oh come on, she's not that bad, Abby, you know that. And it looks like it's what Tony's doing on his own anyway, he's closing up..."

"Well then we have to go upstairs Timmy, and quick!" She grabbed his abused arm and tried to drag him out of the lab, not paying any attention to his wince as her hand painfully compressed the budding bruise she was responsible for. "What are you doing? He needs us!" She asked, confused when he dug his heels into the hard plastic floor.

_You need to be strong, and don't let her puppy eyes get to you. For Tony. _"Abby... I think Tony needs to be left alone for now. So he can, er... come to terms with the idea of his dad being a crook. You know, I think we should let him digest the news for himself." _And not bury him under gushy feelings, _McGee added in his head, but from the look on Abby's face that last comment wouldn't make the world a better place if changed into airwaves of variable frequencies commonly called sound. "He knows we're here for him, Abby, he'll come to us if he needs us."

Abby's eyes were wide and gleaming strangely. Her chin wobbled and after a second she lunged at McGee again, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and folding both their bodies into a hug.

"You're right McGee. I know he will, I just hate knowing he's unhappy and I shouldn't do anything about it. Because he's so Tony, y'know?"

* * *

Gibbs strolled into the bullpen and paused near the elevators, frustrated with Senior for refusing to talk until his lawyers arrived, angry with the same man for not being a father his son could be proud of, and most of all concerned for Tony. The insufferable, arrogant business shark was unfazed by his glare and seemed immune to his menacing aura, triggering a nearly irresistible urge to grab him by the collar of his no doubt expensive designer shirt, and slam him into one of the interrogation's room's stainless steel walls. He figured the _stainless_ part had to be meant for something, and turning it into a proper, if only temporary, _interrogation_ room would demonstrate that. His concern outweighed all other feelings, however overwhelming they might have seemed to him, when he spotted, over the cubicles' semi-walls, his agent and his partner at their desks. They were uncharacteristically quiet, apparently focusing intently on their computer screens, furiously working away. However, a tenseness in Ziva's back and shoulders told him Tony knew about his dad's questionable omission and she was ready to react, expecting an outburst, a sob, something, anything. He sighed, toying with the idea of letting DiNozzo leave early tonight, hell right now if it made anything better. But it wouldn't and he knew it. It would only mean that he'd be dealing with it alone, and Gibbs couldn't allow that. He'd witnessed too many of Tony's self-destructive habits to let him go home alone after his father betrayed all he believed in, all they –the team, NCIS, federal agents, Tony – stood for. No, Tony had to stay. And, for once, he had to be given work to occupy him, make him feel involved and still part of the team. He needed to be shown he was trusted.

Having come to a decision, Gibbs resolutely walked to Toy's desk. _Don't look like you're coddling him. He'd hate it. _"DiNozzo. Get McGee up here and you to look into the Avon Grüden armament projects. I want to know if there's another link between the two companies."

Tony straightened up sharply and grabbed his phone. "Yes boss. Straight away boss. McGeek, get your brains up here. Boss wants the impossible, we do the impossible. In this case, we need to understand a data-base-full of chemical and technical gibberish. So step on it McSluggee!"

He turned back to Gibbs with a half-hearted version of his usual bright grin. "He's coming up, boss."

Gibbs nodded. _Good move,_ he thought as he turned to his desk.

* * *

A.N. Review?


	13. Chapter 13

A.N. Hello, dear readers. As always, I hope you like this chapter. Just so you know, I have the next two chapters more than half-ready, so it shouldn't be as long between updates for a while. Don't get used to it though, it won't always be that way, unfortunately. Anyway, read and review, if you will.

I don't own NCIS and I thank my wonderful beta Kakyd for always finding time to proof-read my story, teach me what American dollars look like (apart from green; I already knew that!) and boost my confidence.

**Chapter Thirteen**

Twenty hours later, the Major Crime Response Team was pretty much at the same point as when they had first stumbled upon Senior's surprising ownership. Tony hadn't endured analysing several years' worth of scientific research and development data for more than a few hours before McGee had found an excuse to shift him over to Ziva's background checks and bring Avon Grüden's files down to Abby. Tony and Ziva were therefore busy running background checks on Avon Grüden and DNAE employees and checking the money flows of the Avon Grüden overseas accounts, which, unsurprisingly to Tony, were where most of the financial weight of the company lay. His father had always had a cunning sixth sense when he came to business_. Although not this time,_ he thought wryly. _This time he stumbled upon us. Bet he didn't factor that in._

Gibbs had come back from yet another coffee run and had sat quietly at his desk doing that intense staring that characterised his deep-in-thoughts investigatory processes, when he suddenly got up.

"DiNozzo, gimme a tenner. Abby needs a CafPow," he ordered.

Tony raised a crooked eyebrow but decided that after staying awake for a full thirty hours, he was in no condition to question the cranky Gibbs his boss was sure to become if he dared question him. He consequently rummaged in his top drawer, pushing aside his beloved Mighty Mouse stapler and several empty food wrappers, found a crumpled bill and handed over the cash wordlessly. Gibbs snatched it and left the bullpen just as silently, picking up his half-full coffee cup from his desk as he walked towards the back elevators.

No sooner was he out of sight than Ziva's phone rang, snapping Tony out of his bemused, speculative train of thoughts. She picked it up and answered it calmly.

"Officer David...Yes Abby... I believe he is on the way to your lab right now. Call me back if he is not there in ten minutes, alright? I will call him then... Thank you Abby."

She looked up to see Tony staring at her questioningly.

"It was Abby. She and McGee have found something and she wanted Gibbs to come down."

Tony still stared, into space this time. "How does he do it?" he asked, in the way a child would ask how Santa managed to visit all those houses in a single night. "Gibbs, I mean. How does he know whenever something interesting is about to happen? How did he know he had to see Abby now? You know, I'm starting to think Abby's theory on black magic is beginning to make sense. What other explanation could there be? Not that this is really a highly rational notion anyway."

Ziva restrained from rolling her eyes, realising that he was once again avoiding speaking about the case – namely what McGee and Abby were calling Gibbs about – by deflecting her and his attention with random lines of thought. Well, she could indulge him for a little while.

"In Mossad, we were taught to never rule out that which we do not know. We do not know that the supernatural does not exist, so we consider it as a possibility, even if it is only a very unlikely one," she answered.

"So if I told you Gibbs' gut was magically telling him when Abby comes up with something, you'd believe that?" he asked sarcastically.

"No Tony I wouldn't," she smiled. Before he could reply and call her out on her apparent inconsistencies, she explained, "I already know that to be true. One can only _believe_ uncertain things; not known facts."

He seemed a bit put out by that answer, but after a few seconds thought appeared to have reconciled himself with the idea of Gibbs' gut being an unquestionable reality in Ziva 's eyes.

"I see what you mean." It was suddenly harder to keep up his 'everything's fine' facade when he was left with no witty come-backs. He sighed, knowing what he needed to ask next.

"You know what Abby and McMIT found down there, Ziva?" he enquired apprehensively.

* * *

Gibbs entered Abby's lab resolutely, holding a CafPow to fend off the case-unrelated verbal assault she was sure to launch into the moment she spotted him on the threshold. He could tell this thing they'd found was big and needed dealing with straight away. So he was a little surprised when she got straight to business, ignoring the large cup of her personal drug.

"Gibbs! Finally! Ziva said you'd be down, but... We found the tertiobutyl(1,3)dimethylaminhexopropan-1-ol!" She was pacing and throwing her hands in the air at the end of each sentence. McGee, on one of the workbench's stools, looked about to drop and seemed content to let Abby do the talking and explaining. _Time to send them home for a bit._ "Well, I mean, we didn't, Avon Grüden did, but we found it in their files, so that's why I said we found it." She was now wringing her hands nervously. "You know what that means, Gibbs, don't you? It means that Tony's dad has both the weapon and the fuel to operate it. Which could be really destructive, in the wrong hands. Not Nagasaki destructive, but definitely destructive." She stopped, looking up at Gibbs expectantly, like a child waiting to be told it was all a bad dream and that dad will make it all better.

Gibbs was beyond livid. He had the man in custody, knew he was somehow creating a dangerous weapon and, what? Selling it to the highest bidder? To terrorists? And he couldn't do a damn thing about it because he wasn't supposed to know about the weapon or the… What did Abby call it? Ah yes, Holy Grail of fuels, since the information had been acquired illegally through McGee's unauthorised hacking. He wanted nothing more than to walk into the interrogation room Senior was currently in, pick him up by his ears and shake him hard until he confessed to everything. Hell, he wanted to unleash Ziva on him, then he'd see what destruction really is; not from afar signing papers but right in his face, brought by an angry Israeli or an enemy in the field. He'd probably have done it too, if the interrogations weren't filmed and he wasn't sitting in that shoebox of a room with three over educated expensive lawyers.

"How much fuel did they make, Abs?" he asked roughly.

"Not much yet, it is only in the late stages of research. They're still testing it and all, trying to find a way to manufacture it on a larger scale."

McGee continued in an exhausted voice, "They're late. They were supposed to start producing it in larger quantities three months ago, but stabilising some of the chemical reactions took longer than they'd expected. Maybe someone got angry at not receiving the delivery they'd paid for, boss? That could explain the deaths."

Gibbs looked at his junior agent, proud he was still making sense even as he struggled to keep his eyes open. "McGee, go tell DiNozzo and Ziva about all this, then go home and sleep. I want you back here at 0600 hours sharp. Go!"

McGee was beyond relieved and darted out of the lab after dropping a quick "Bye," to Abby, tripping over his own feet in his haste to leave before Gibbs changed his mind. Of course, he was the one tasked with giving Tony the bad news again, but he was so tired he figured he could do it on auto-pilot and then rush home.

Abby smirked at McGee's hurried escape, but that smirk turned into a wide smile when a CafPow cup appeared in front of her. She narrowed her eyes playfully at Gibbs.

"This isn't decaf, right Gibbs? You wouldn't do that to me, would you?" she asked remembering Tony's prank a few days before.

He smiled thinly and answered, "No, I wouldn't, Abs." He turned to leave.

"Gibbs..." Abby stopped him with a quavering voice.

"Yeah, Abs?" He looked concerned.

"What about Tony? I mean, he already knew his dad was probably a crook, but this... This is way bigger and scarier and dangerous."

Gibbs sighed. "I know Abs. He'll be fine." He kissed her temple gently and walked out, leaving her alone in the lab, sucking in her energy drink and reaching for Bert. He smiled as the tell-tale noise reached him before the elevator doors shut.

* * *

Vance raised his eyes towards the heavens – well camouflaged as the dark orange ceiling of his office – when he heard a commotion outside his office. _Gibbs isn't happy_, _and an unhappy Gibbs means trouble, _he thought as his secretary exclaimed "Once again, sir, I cannot let you-"

Her attempts at maintaining the protocol concerning the access to the Director's office proved –unsurprisingly – fruitless since the door flung open unceremoniously and shut in her indignant face just as rapidly. Gibbs stood there for a second, gathering his thoughts and trying to lock away the bulk of his irritation. After all, that irksome woman was only doing her job.

"Something I can do for you, Agent Gibbs?" Vance asked with a smirk, twirling a toothpick with his fingers as he spoke.

"Yeah. You can get me the DoD clearance to access the DNAE and Avon Grüden research and development databases. The murders are linked to their progress and I need to know that...officially," he finished with a meaningful look, raising both eyebrows and staring hard at the Director where he sat in his large chair, the toothpick now trapped between his teeth.

One of Vance's own eyebrows ascended in response and Gibbs nodded. _Uh-oh. I really hope that McGee is as good as everyone seems to think, I don't want to deal with the consequences of an NCIS agent hacking without authorisation into secure networks. _Good thing he and Gibbs had such a good understanding sometimes, it made some conversations unnecessary and he could therefore play the 'don't ask don't tell' card, pretending to be unaware of his Major Case Response Team's unorthodox investigative methods.

"I'll do my best, but the DoD didn't seem inclined to grant you that permission the last time I contacted them. Both companies work on highly classified projects. They were pretty tight-lipped about it and they won't alter their position this easily. Try to find other leads on your side, while I do my thing with the politics."

Gibbs seemed unsatisfied with the honest but unhelpful answer and after glaring for a moment seemed to accept he wasn't getting a more compliant answer. "I will," he groaned. "Just make sure these politicians know it's a matter of national security and not one of their pathetic turf-wars." Had he already mentioned how much he hated politicians to Vance? Probably. Time to go find other leads, then. Tony and Ziva could have found something by now. He'd go and check.

He spun around and opened the door, sparing a "Good evening" for the glowering secretary and a kick for the wall next to the fake plant she'd positioned in her office. _I'll never understand why people buy fake plants when they're so obviously ugly and unnatural, _he thought, before exiting the room.

* * *

**A.N.** Spare a minute to review? Remember, not all reviews have to be praises, constructive criticism are also welcome, so you can review even if something bothered you.

By the way, thank you for the great reviews I got on the last chapter, especially TheNaggingCube for making the effort of reviewing in French. I know it's cliché, but those little unopened letters in my inbox just make me beam like the top of the Eiffel Tower!


	14. Chapter 14

**A.N.** Another chapter! And you didn't have to wait a full week for it!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own NCIS. No, in fact I do, but the man shoving a gun in my back won't allow me to type that and wants me to sign over the rights to him. Ah, just another overly-enthusiastic fanfictioner...

**Chapter Fourteen**

Ziva was anxious, her features and her stomach twisting at the thought that there wasn't anything she could do to alleviate her partner's sorrow at that point. When McGee, exhausted and slightly light-headed, had stumbled into the squad-room and broken the news of his father's ownership of the super-fuel, Tony's reaction had been remarkably subdued. He simply nodded when McGee announced he was going home for a few hours and stood immobile as his co-worker left. But a few minutes later he'd cursed loudly, in a crude fashion Ziva had never heard him use before, shoved his hands through his hair, punched the half-wall of his cubicle hard and left the bullpen, kicking trash cans, chairs and walls as he went. Ziva was grateful it was already 8 pm and most of the other agents had left, ensuring that his melt-down had been fairly private. Not that she wouldn't have _persuaded_ any potential witnesses to keep that particular incident to themselves, but this certainly made things easier. A disillusioned frown suddenly crumpled her face. _Who I am kidding, _she thought bitterly. _None of this is easy._

She hadn't heard from Tony for the better part of an hour when she suddenly decided she couldn't take wondering where he was any longer. She grabbed her desk phone and started to dial, startled when Gibbs looked up from his computer and uttered a commanding, "Don't."

"Why?" she answered defiantly, daring him to stop her.

"He'll come back when he's ready. Let him be alone right now, if it's what he needs." Gibbs stood up and stepped up to her desk, laying a comforting and restraining hand on the arm which still held the half-dialled phone. Ziva stared at him for a moment, grasping his meaning and contemplating his opinion before sighing and setting the black handset back into its cradle.

"I hope you're right," she sighed as she looked down, defeated.

_Me too,_ thought Gibbs as he patted her arm and left his team's allotted space. C_offee._

_

* * *

_

The phone rang, emitting a shrill, pulsing noise in the night lull of the bullpen's din. A pale hand grabbed it in the light cone of a desk lamp, answering it with a tired voice. "David?"

"Ziva..."

She sat up straighter and leaned forward, resting an elbow on the flat surface of her desk, laying her hand over her forehead and tilting her head as though it would help her hear better. "Tony? Where are you?" Her voice was hurried and exuded worry.

"I'm... I went for a run and went too far. I'm in Anacostia Park and I don't have my wallet, so I can't take a cab... Could you come and get me?" His voice through the phone sounded small and adrift. Ziva felt her heart tighten in a way she was not accustomed to, the pain from his tone somehow triggering an aching response in her own body.

"Of course. Where are you exactly?" she asked matter-of-factly. This wasn't the time or place to be anything but efficient.

He gave her an address and ended the call with a quick "Thank you."

Ziva got up and walked over to his corner, opening his drawers haphazardly. It had been snowing for almost half an hour and she knew Tony had left without a coat, let alone a scarf or spare clothes, and was sure to be wet and freezing by now. _He must really have been upset to run in his new leather Italian shoes, _she thought, smiling slightly through her concern. She found gym clothes, thick sweats and spare socks and shoes, stuffed them all in a backpack and paused. Should she call Gibbs? _It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission._ What was the number of that rule again? She left a scribbled note taped on Gibbs' computer – probably the most use the idle machine had seen in weeks, if not months – and decided that if he needed anything he'd call her. By that time she'd already be gone and he wouldn't be able to do much about it. She grabbed her own winter gear and rushed out of the room, clutching the backpack, her cell phone, her badge and gun, the post-it with the address, her coat and her car keys.

* * *

Gibbs sipped the scorching coffee, smiling when he felt it spread throughout his body, the heat emanating from his chest to his limbs, invading him with comfort. He knew the caffeine would kick in shortly and the double effect of warmth and energy would please his tired body and intellect.

He frowned as he turned his mind back to the case; if Tony wasn't back yet, he'd let Ziva call him and drag his arse back to the Navy Yard. He didn't care if he resented it; Tony was staying here where Gibbs could keep an eye on him and stop him from doing something overly stupid. Sometimes tough love was what one needed. Or at least what that particular DiNozzo needed.

Gibbs exited the lift to find a dark, empty bullpen, only lit by the emergency exit lights and a small lamp on Ziva's desk. Where _was_ Ziva? How did his whole team disappear on him, one after the other? This case was really getting to everybody, and if he was honest with himself, it was getting to him too. He couldn't wait for the whole thing to be over, for his agents to simply come in and do their work efficiently, in the manner he had taught them; for the politicians to stop interfering in matters in which they did nothing but put lives at risk, and for lawyers to be appointed by the state and to wear cheap nylon suits just like they ought to, and not expensive clothes from designers whose name he couldn't pronounce. He hated second guessing himself and tiptoeing around his team. He wanted a good old, straightforward murder!

He spotted the piece of paper on his computer screen and snatched it up, lighting his own desk lamp. _Gone to fetch Tony – Ziva._ He sat down heavily. Short and effective, as always. He was relieved she knew where Tony was. One thing he didn't have to worry about anymore. Now, back to the case. He reached for the financial files McGee had printed for him earlier that day, knowing he wouldn't work on what only amounted to a prop in his working space – his computer. He was however stopped in his inspection of the second page of head-ache inducing charts and numbers by the sound of the Director clearing his throat, up on the lookout over the bullpen.

"You got that authorisation yet, Leon?" he asked, without conviction.

"No. But I did get a few interesting phone calls." He paused, making sure he'd captured Gibb's attention. If the way the silver-haired sniper was glaring at him from the floor below was any indication, he hated HHHh "DiNozzo Senior. It's been nearly twenty-four hours now since you took him into custody and several senators are intent on making sure that _all federal institutions respect the fundamental laws which make our country a great democracy_" Vance quoted, his tone cynic.

Gibbs' jaw clenched. "Let's charge him with terrorism, then, and make it legal indefinite custody," he suggested in a snarl.

Vance shook his head. "You can't. There's no evidence to that yet. All you have is him lying about his connection to Avon Grüden. That's only an obstruction to justice, and all that'll get him with these lawyers of his is a fine he won't give a damn about and a slap on the wrist by one of his judge friends. You have to let him go, Gibbs."

* * *

Mr Anthony DiNozzo Sr was very pleased with himself. His lawyers had obeyed his orders to call a few influential _friends_ who owed him a couple of favours, and even that hawk Gibbs hadn't been able to find an excuse to keep him in that dreadful, ill-lit shoe-box of a room where he'd spent the last twenty-four hours on an uncomfortable metal chair. He had however enjoyed watching his Harvard lawyers sitting slumped on the probably unsanitary floor and against the wall. _Serves you right for charging me so much, you scarecrows! _he thought.

Gibbs had left him in manacles the entire day and night, allowing the cuffs to be removed only when it couldn't be avoided, which turned out to mean only on bathroom visits. The man had looked murderous as he'd wordlessly removed them a few minutes ago, glowering at him the entire time. Senior hadn't been able to bite back a chipper and triumphant "Goodnight, Special Agent Gibbs," savouring his victory over the man his son so obviously looked up to. _He's never been able to stand on his own and never could choose his role models properly,_ he thought with disdain. Retrospectively, angering Gibbs further probably didn't constitute a very good move in that game they both knew they were playing, each with their assets and strengths. Gibbs seemed like the kind of obsessive cop who'd tape pictures and reports to his basement walls and draw felt-tip lines between them years after a case had been officially deemed 'cold'. _Should look into shipping him to Alaska. I wonder if Senator Alleghan could do that. He's pretty close friend with SecNav..._

That particular thought was halted when he stepped into the NCIS building's entrance hall and noticed his son and that chilling woman, David, walking in through the sliding doors. He looked as badly dressed as ever, in sweats and wet, un-styled, plainly appalling hair, and sporting red-rimmed eyes and a decidedly grey complexion. He'd thought his son had improved in that area, having seen him wearing was what definitely an Armani suit, if only one of the cheaper ones, the previous day, but he'd obviously been wrong.

Tony stopped when he took in the sight his father offered; the bulky man, in astonishingly unwrinkled clothes, was ensconced in a team of lawyers who matched their steps with his in a protective and fretfully apprehensive manner. His father's eyes lightened as he directed a radiant smile at Tony and Ziva, and met them in front of the reception desk.

"Tony," he exclaimed. "How are you, my boy?"

"They say you were involved in treason and arms dealing, dad." Tony said tonelessly, his voice and eyes flat and expressionless.

"Good thing my son's a fed then, eh?" he winked. He _winked._

"Did you do it? Did you, dad?" Tony tried to keep himself detached from the situation, but to Ziva he sounded desperate, pleading with his father, hoping that this was just a misunderstanding and that his father wasn't just another of the criminals they put away.

"Don't answer that, Mr DiNozzo," one of the suited lawyers ordered. "We should go now."

"Oh come on Tony, can't you just have Gibbs bury that?" he pleaded. "If I've ever taught you anything, you must have something on him to, how can I say it, _convince_ him to let it go?" he added with a wink. Again.

Tony looked at him in disgust, taking in his falsely sweet expression.

"No! No Dad, I don't, and if I did I would never use it to blackmail Gibbs or let you off the hook for murder, smuggling or whatever the hell you're doing!" Tony fired back, his face turning redder by the second. His voice started off menacingly quiet but rose until he was screaming. "Is that why you requested NCIS to work the case? You hoped we wouldn't investigate you? You wanted to influence me into, what, bending the rules for you?"

"Hey! Junior! Don't you dare yell at me like that!" Senior cut him, his voice just as loud and his face turning from scarlet to an alarming eggplant. "I'm your father and I deserve your respect and I want you to comply when I ask you for something, as a good son should. But you never were good son, were you?" he snickered. "Always too soft, always running back to your nannies' skirts. Even after I put you through those military schools you had no backbone."

Tony's fists were curled up so tight Ziva was sure his knuckle bones would burst through the skin. His neck looked like it had spent three days unprotected under the Indian sun and the veins on his face seemed about to burst. She had never seen him so… so… mad.

"You were and you are nothing but a burden, _Tony_. Even your nickname is pathetic, I knew I shouldn't have let your mother call you that when you were a child. She was always all over you like you were some precious, fragile little _girl_."

Tony's entire body shuddered at the mention of his mother, but Senior didn't pause before delivering more cruel blows.

"You are a poor excuse for a son, Junior," his father spit, "throwing the family business back in my face and walking away to become a _cop_, of all things! After your foolish fantasies of being a sports athlete and earning a living that way, you had to find something even worse to do. And now you won't even help me! Do you even know the meaning of the word _family_?"

Ziva couldn't take it anymore. She glanced at Tony who appeared to be holding back tears and a very painful punch to the jaw. He was already leaning in to deliver it when she stepped in, grabbing his father's elbow hard, brutally digging in her fingers and shoving him out of the lobby, through the door and into the waiting car. She kept her hand on his arm, twisting it as he tried to sit up in the car seat.

She bent over to whisper menacingly in his ear. "You ever tell him anything like that again, you ever _think_ of hurting him in any way your sick brain can create, I will kill you so skilfully, no one will ever recognize your body, you worthless _benzona_." And she slammed the car door in his startled face.

* * *

**A.N.** I know from the story traffic thingy-midget that I have a few readers from Israël. Please forgive me if Ziva's swearing offended you, or if it is inaccurate. I researched it, but most English-Hebrew translators give the Hebrew in, well, Hebrew letters (duh Azilée, what did you expect?) which makes things pretty complicated Anyway, Hebrew is next on my to-learn list, just before Spanish, so I should be able to discuss – politely – with you in a few years.

So DiNozzo Sr has finally shown his true colours... Don't worry, I'm not done with him yet! I'd say we're about two thirds through the story, but then again I thought it would be wrapped up in three chapters when I started it, so I'm not a very good fore-caster. All you need to know for now is, there is still a lot on that plot outline sheet of mine.

Reviews are always nice...


	15. Chapter 15

**A.N.** That's three chapters this week! I'm sort of stuck right now though, I'm discovering that action scenes are incredibly difficult to write for me, so it may be a while before you get another chapter.

This chapter was, believe it or not, the first I wrote. It sort of wrote itself, and I was going to post it as a one-shot, when I started to wonder why Tony was so upset with his father and challenged myself to write a full story. So fifteen chapters and thirty thousand words later, here we are! The thing is, I'm not sure this fits with the tone of the rest of the piece anymore. Anyway, read and share your thoughts!

I don't own NCIS, and Kakyd is a great beta. In fact, as a blanket comment, I'd like to extend the "Kakyd is my beta and doing an amazing job of it, thank you so much" statement to all the chapters, since I forgot to mention it in the last chapter's author note (now, wrongs righted, I can go and hide in shame)

**Chapter Fifteen**

Tony was half bent, his arms braced on the edge of the sink counter, frustration and anger boiling just within his control as he alternatively bowed his head and stared seething at his own reflection in the mirror. He couldn't believe he had fallen for it _again_. The act of the concerned, remorseful father, no, worse, the _loving _father! Ha, he really should know better by now. How all the years of neglect, despise and psychological abuse hadn't permanently erased his need for his father's love or at least approval, he couldn't fathom, but they hadn't and he was left once again hurt, humiliated, furious at his father and despising himself for expecting anything else. The fist he had punched into the bathroom's wall a few minutes earlier throbbed softly, offering no distraction from his rage as he shook with the urge to slap himself or smash the mirror into tiny, un-accusing shards of silver.

He heard the door open, letting in the hushed roar of a bullpen afternoon, before it was shut quietly. He felt her presence as she locked them in, but was startled by her stance. He knew she'd watched him leave the bullpen, so aware of her eyes that he practically felt them on his skin, as it so often happened now. He had expected her to come barging in to shake him out of his self-pity, stinging his ego, pulling at his pride and forcing it out to cover his weaknesses. He needed it, in a way. It was just how they functioned. She teased him, provoked him, offering him a harmless outlet for his anger, allowing him to move on and out of it. At least, that was what she usually did… which was probably why he was so unsettled by the waves of comfort rolling from her now.

Ziva closed the door to the men's bathroom (_Ah, here we are again_ she thought with a smile) and focused on the form leaning livid again the sinks. She understood all about disappointment and failed expectations, especially the family kinds, and it pained her to recognize them in Tony. A feeling of tenderness and protectiveness soared through her, compelling her to take a few calm steps towards him while he continued to stare down at the counter, his back tense. She gently placed a hand on the left side of his face and turned it to her, holding his eyes as he looked at her with a guarded but upset and damaged expression. Anger flared in her when she took in how affected he was by his father's doings, but she quickly put it away to deal with later, she had to take care of Tony first.

He leaned into her soothing touch and turned his whole body to face her, slowly straightening his back, all the while trying to assess her mood. She sighed as she watched him stand, stiff and insecure, and brought her second hand carefully to his face, using it to bow his forehead to her lips as she stood on tip-toe. Closing her eyes, she pressed a soft kiss to his hairline, and heard him breathe out a loud, shaky sigh, relaxing into her touch. Keeping her eyes shut and her breath even, she tilted his head slightly to place another light kiss between his eyebrows, featherlike and tender. He rested the weight of his head in her hands, and with it displayed the trust he had for her. Her lips skimmed above his left eyebrow before delicately settling on his temple, the fingers of her right hand fanning across his jaw line in a caress. She then rested her cheek where her lips had been, allowing him to take in her proximity, a foot still between the remainder of their bodies. He breathed in her smell, the characteristic scent of her hair and the familiar fragrance of her perfume. He reached out slowly with both arms, draping them around her waist and pulling her gently forward until their bodies rested in each other's embrace, her petite form somehow anchoring him away from his tempestuous feelings and easing the tension from his body. She wrapped one arm around his shoulders and rubbed comforting circles between his shoulder blades, while her other hand traced random, butterfly patterns on his cheek and jaw.

Tony tightened his arms around her, revelling in her offered strength and the comfort of her presence. How that woman had managed it, he didn't know, but right now he didn't care either. She was holding him and suddenly his father's behaviour didn't affect him so much anymore. Crazy, stealthy, _unflappable_ Ziva was holding him and he abruptly felt himself dissociate from the madness Anthony DiNozzo Senior stirred up in him as he tried to only concentrate on Ziva, her even breathing and her fingers on his cheek. God how many times he'd wished for this to happen, no, to be honest, how many times he'd fantasised about this hug, his body and hers moulded together behind a locked door. But this was so different from anything he'd ever imagine. Ziva was embracing him carefully, allowing him to lean on and into her, fully in control and touching tenderly him as if he was, of all things, _precious_ and fragile.

And, he, Tony DiNozzo, lifelong Playboy and GSM subscriber, women's best nightmare and the condom industry's best-learned client, was just realising how good a not-screaming-with-pleasure-Ziva-hug could be. _Ha!_ he thought, _just another charming similarity to owe your cheap father. _Of course he would be thinking about sex now! He tensed and cursed his father once more, having proven him right again: he wasn't good enough, he didn't deserve Ziva's comforting if unexpected display of affection, and he sure as hell was weak.

Ziva felt the change in his stance. _His father is still getting to him_, she thought. She was fleetingly irritated by his lack of self-confidence, but it was washed away quickly by the memory of her own father and the effect he had on her. She hated that she craved for his esteem, but she did. She hated that she wanted him to look at her and smile a proud smile, but she'd taken on near-impossible missions just to not see a disapproving frown on his face. She hated,_ hated, hated _the man, but still she tried. And she couldn't blame Tony for behaving much like she had.

"He is wrong, you know," she said in the silent, dimly lit bathroom. Tony's breath hitched, waiting for more. She took a second to gather her thoughts, aware that she had caught his attention. She had to get this right. Laying her head on his shoulder against his neck and tightening both arms around his shoulders, she took a calming breath and told him:

"You are worthy."

Tony froze, startled by how right she was about his current thoughts. "My father?" he managed to ask. He felt her nod against his shoulder before she straightened to look at him.

"Tony. You are not a scared child anymore. You are trustworthy, respectful, compassionate, hardworking, loving, loyal..." This was arduous for her, speaking about feelings, especially when what she felt were the mushy type, but she could see Tony needed it.

"You are a great investigator and a great friend. You are funny, and you always have my back and I know you care for all the team and Ducky and Abby so much! " _God this is disorganised_, she thought, wanting nothing more than a Tony 1000 mega-watt smile to allow her to walk out of the gushing emotions back into the rational bull-pen. But Tony was looking her straight in the eye, his face unreadable, and, to be truthful, she needed to say it nearly as much as he needed to hear it. _Ugh, I suck at this_, she thought, deciding to drive her point home without spouting any more unruly words.

"You have become a man he should be proud of."

Tony blinked. The mask split, then disintegrated. He took a small step back, keeping only her hands in his. He briefly considered laughing it off, but he knew she could already read the pain and confusion in his eyes. Proud? Proud of him?

"Then why isn't he?"

Ziva felt her gut twist at his lost little boy's voice. He looked so hurt and confused that she wanted to walk to the door, unlock it, march right up to his father and wring his neck for making him feel that way. No, that would be too quick a death, she could think up a few creative Mossad-taught moves for that insufferable, arrogant, inconsiderate... _Not now, Ziva!_ she ordered herself. _Tony._

Why wasn't his father proud? How could he not be pleased with his son? Ziva didn't have an answer to that, probably because there wasn't one. But Tony expected one, so she gave him the only thing she had: another question.

"Is he someone you should want admiration from? Aside from his being your father, of course."

Tony was taken aback by this non-answer and didn't reply.

"Tony, he is not the sort of person you should want to be, and you do not want to be like him, do you? He only judges you by his own standards. Maybe he can not appreciate you because you have chosen different values for yourself, yes?"

Tony nodded uncertainly, wondering how the hell she had managed to make things so clear. His unloving, distant, cheating, drunken crook of a father wasn't proud of him. So what? He knew it wasn't that simple, that his 'daddy issues' couldn't be solved in one Ziva-therapy session, but right then he felt better, the tension of his father's disapproval had lessened and he suddenly felt freer. He allowed his lips to turn into a shaky smile and murmured "So I should actually get worried about the moment he approves of me, right?"

Ziva smiled her own brand of 1000 mega-watt grin at his poor attempt at humour. "Exactly," she established.

Tony beamed back and then chuckled. "You know what this reminds me of? There's this one scene in _That Lucky Touch_, okay romantic movie made in 1975 with Roger Moore and Susannah York,in which one of the characters says _In NATO, you have to have unanimous approval from all the member nations. It's like getting a troop of horses to piss at the same time._ Kinda like me, don't you think? Can't get everyone to piss on me at the same time!"

Ziva laughed and hoisted herself up to sit between the sinks. If Tony was making movie references, he'd be fine.

"And only you would be unhappy about not being urinated on by everyone! Or is it an all-Americans thing?" she teased.

"Oh come on, don't tell me Israelis don't do it as well," he fired back, happy the crisis was over, or at least on stand-by for now. "You must have some kind of national guilty pleasure!"

Ziva snorted and gave him a falsely offended look. "We are not guilty and I do not see how a pleasure can be agreeable if it makes you feel guilty." She knew perfectly well what a guilty pleasure was, but seeing Tony's eyes spark up with fun at her difficulties with idioms could only be a good thing considering his father was probably still in the navy yard. He opened his mouth to joke her around when someone started banging on the bathroom's door.

"Oh come on, get out! I'm sure it's DiNutsy and that liaison woman again. They use this bathroom the way Gibbs uses the elevator! Can't they get a room or something?"

Tony opened the door to see the-man-who-never-washes-his-hands complaining to an accountancy geek. He leaned over in his face and said with a menacing smile:

"Why don't you ask the Director to give our team a room? And her name is Mossad Liaison Officer Ziva David, NOT _liaison woman_! Just so you know, she can probably kill you 20 different ways with toilet paper."

The man's shoulders slumped as his friend scurried into the bathroom, passing a smirking Ziva in the doorway. She quirked an eyebrow and smiled sweetly at Tony.

"Aw Tony you flatter me, but I can only think of twelve. Although if wet toilet paper also counts…" The man had turned very pale and decided that he didn't need the bathroom so badly after all. He turned on his heels and hurried off, trying to preserve a dignified look as he tripped over his own feet. Ziva and Tony stared at him before catching each other's eye and bursting out laughing.

_We will be fine_, thought Ziva.

* * *

**A.N. **So did you enjoy it? Reviews would be inspiring...


	16. Chapter 16

A.N. I'm tired of fretting over this, so I'm just posting it the way it is. I haven't abandoned you, I've just been having a really hard time writing this, so please forgive the impossibly long time between updates and thank you for being patient enough to stick around and read this. Please review and tell me if it's as bad as I think it is. Oh, and thank you to Kakyd for as always providing me with advice, encouragement, cinematographic references and beta-magic, but also to combatcrazy and Sparkiebunny for their support. You guys are on my personal hall of fame!

Guess what? I still don't own NCIS. I know you all expected me to and I hate to disappoint you, but I have to be honest or the nice men in white coats are going to come and get me again. Then they lock me up and call me delusional and I don't have internet access, which would make you unhappy. So you see, I'm doing it for you, really!

**Chapter Sixteen **

Ziva was on the phone, as she had been for the past hour or so. So far, Tony had heard her speak Hebrew, Arabic, French and now Russian. As far as he could tell from his position across from her, she had been charming to the French man providing her with information from the other side of the pond, straight down to business with her Hebrew-speaking correspondent, and had displayed easy familiarity with the Arab person on the other end of the telephone cord if the good natured _Salaam Alikum_ and _shukran_ were any indication. The Russian she was now in line with was either less compliant or less lucky.

As if on cue, spurt of angry Russian erupted from Ziva's end of the bullpen. "_Вы неблагодарный ублюдок, как может Вы забывать, что я спас Вашу задницу в Стокгольме!" _ she hissed, proving Tony's assumption right. He didn't know what the hell it meant, but her tone and composure left very little doubt as to her opinion concerning her contact. _Someone is lucky to be a continent and an ocean away, _thought Tony. An exasperated Ziva was not one he, or anyone, should dare mess with.

When they'd left the bathroom and returned to the bullpen with smiles on their faces and a few bubbles of laugh left-overs in their trail, Gibbs had experienced a sense of relief and gratefulness he hadn't expected. Between worrying over his agent's whereabouts when Tony was clearly in a less than ideal state of mind, and threatening the receptionists down in the entrance hall about spreading stories on Tony and his father, the last hour had definitely taken a toll on him. He was growing soft. He snorted at the thought and ordered Tony to get back to work in a voice that would have been complemented with a loud "Pronto" had Tony been the one giving out the orders. Ziva had been given the task of spending the agency's scarce funding on over-priced overseas calls, or as she and Gibbs called it, checking up on the chatter of the terrorists' and other arms dealers' world.

Tony focused back on his work, more, endless financial accounts – _if this were a TV show,_ he thought, _they wouldn't give that part of the job more than a few seconds of screen-time_— and felt he was finally getting somewhere when Ziva startled him by slamming the phone into its cradle.

"Someone is going to have a bad surprise when their favourite 1961 Aston Martin is destroyed tomorrow by an innocent ailing tree," she hissed, glaring at the phone as though it had been responsible for her indignation.

Tony looked at her eagerly. " '61 Aston Martin? What model?"

"DB4 GT Factory Lightweight," she answered, exasperated by the seemingly universal male need to know every remotely fancy car. The only reason she even knew about this car was that Dimitriev hadn't stopped rambling on and on about it the two months he was leased to Mossad for inter-agency training and assigned to her, in the winter before she came to NCIS.

"Seriously?" Tony's eyes were opened so wide they seemed about to drop out of their sockets. "Ziva, that car is worth nearly two million dollars! It was the first car to go zero to 60 to zero in under 20 seconds, thanks to featherweight bodywork and disc brakes," he recited enthusiastically. "There were only six built. You can't destroy it, it'd be a heresy! A crime against humanity! You could just, I don't know, steal it, have it shipped here or something, but destroying that car... damn..."

"It is much easier for me to arrange for that car to be destroyed than be shipped when I'm not in Russia, Tony. I do not want to bother my contacts too much," Ziva explained matter-of-factly. "You are hoping I will give it to you, yes?" she asked with a sly smile.

"What? No! I was just-" Tony was suddenly head-slapped and watched Ziva's face transition from entertained to highly amused. "What was that for, Boss?" he complained. _Whined_, Ziva amended.

"Stop stuttering, DiNozzo. What do you got?" Gibbs smirked.

"I... Uh... Not stuttering boss," Tony mumbled as he searched around his messy desk for one particular file. Of course it looked exactly like all the other files, in their manila cardboard jackets. _Ah._ "Here. I found that large sums of money have been deposited regularly by both DNAE and Avon Grüden on the accounts of a Mr Abdelkader Jamal, an Iraqi political refugee since 2008," he clicked on his computer and a passport picture of the Arab man appeared on the plasma screen, "who has no known connection either of the firms and no valid reason I can think of that would explain the fifty thousand dollars every week for four months, which coincides with when the first disappearances and _suicides_ happened."

Gibbs looked at the picture, interested. This was finally going somewhere. "Family?" he demanded.

"None here, a wife and four children back in Iraq. Apparently they didn't make it out of Baghdad in time to join him on the trek over to the Turkish border, which he crossed along with a whole group of clandestine migrants, probably helped by his military training under Saddam's reign. They made it to the Mediterranean Sea and took a fishing boat across to Greece. I have no idea how he made it from Europe to here, but I'm guessing it wasn't pretty. That'd make a good movie, right boss? We could get Alexander Siddig to play Jamal, the villains would be the greedy smugglers and the gut-wrenching tension of soldiers and cops coming very close to finding them where they're hiding under an over-turned boat or behind little huts would totally work; oh, and we could throw in some family drama, with the family left in Iraq, just to get chicks hooked up too," Tony had grown increasingly animated as he planned his imaginary movie, while Gibbs stared at him blankly, waiting for him to run out of steam. He had, after all, just found one of the very few break-throughs of the case and Gibbs figured he could let that one ranting go.

Ziva, however, was less compliant and frowned at him in clear disapproval. "You think it is epic and exciting Tony? These people have been to hell and back and you want to make it a movie?" She sounded disgusted.

"Hey!" he objected, stung by her obvious censure. "Films can be an important way to spread ideas and information to a large portion of the population. I mean, you should see what can be done propaganda-wise using movies. I bet you more than half of this country doesn't know about Middle-Eastern refugees. They would if Clint Eastwood made a film about them," he defended.

Gibbs took this as his cue to cut in. "Any links to terrorism?"

Tony glared at Ziva and turned back to Gibbs. "Yeah, boss, he's been on the FBI watch list since 2008, when he got here. He's not on it anymore though. Must have convinced them he really was an innocent refugee."

"Good. No office politics then. McGee back yet?" he asked glancing at his junior field agent's empty desk.

"No boss," fired back DiNozzo.

"He will be back in an hour, Gibbs," added Ziva.

"Fine, you two go. Be careful, take him in and we'll interrogate him here." No point risking his agents getting hurt politely asking questions when he could just arrest the suspect or witness or whatever the hell he was, for terrorism. And he needed McGee to work his computer magic here anyways.

* * *

Ziva and Tony parked in the residential street, glancing at the formerly pretty houses, their pale paint peeling unevenly in patches of wooden tiredness and their front lawn bared by years of careless treading and inexistent gardening into a muddy field of surviving grass blades. The house they were interested in sported a few steps leading up to a worn porch which sheltered an old faded swing chair, the rhythmic creaking it produced in a disturbing resemblance of a wail the only noise that surrounded them. They drew their weapons, keeping their arms extended and pointing the guns down against their thighs, unnerved by the eerie snow-smothered silence of the road. The winter morning light was weak and vaguely sinister as it filtered through a thick layer of dirty-grey snow-promising clouds. Tony climbed up to the mosquito net front door, peeking in and discovering a dark, unlit, apparently deserted front room. He nodded slightly towards the back of the house at Ziva, who nodded back in a silent acknowledgement of his wordless order.

She quietly stepped around the building, side-stepping an abandoned beer bottle and a muddy pair of jeans in the process, and staying clear of the windows, crouching, her weapon now to her chest, ready to strike at the first sign of alarm. She glimpsed a tidy if somewhat derelict living room, with a sagging couch, the tired fabric holding together years of slouching and sprawling on the worn cushions. She continued her stealthy progress around the house and carefully padded up to the backdoor. A quick survey revealed a dark, unmoving form sitting at the kitchen counter in the pale darkness of the early morning, a lone figure with his back turned to her and hunched shoulders probably cradling a bowl of cereals from the box she could see in front of him. She could very well picture the vacant look of blank boredom as he read, perhaps for the fifth day this week, the cheap literature the cardboard box offered, in a classic display of some human traits' universality.

Ziva retreated and moved back to the side of the building, at the other end of which Tony was waited for her assessment of the situation. She quickly signalled their suspect's position, using the short-hand signs years of practice and worked had developed, and indicated that he should enter from the front while she barged in the kitchen from the back. Having silently agreed on the protocol, they left to go into position. Ziva breathed in deeply next to the back door, her weapon drawn once again upwards against her cheek, at the ready while simultaneously calming her with the coolness of its sleek metal. Ziva began to count the twenty seconds she estimated Tony needed to pick the lock and move silently through the house to the kitchen, keeping her eyes trained keenly on Abdelkader Jamal. She frowned when he unexpectedly began to gather the cereal box, his now empty bowl and cup of coffee on the breakfast bar. She decided to act straight-away then, and kicked in the door screaming "NCIS. Don't move!"

The suspect tensed and half rose at the shout, but quickly let himself fall back into his seat when Tony appeared, gun drawn, at the kitchen door in front of him. Ziva walked up behind him until she was just a few feet away from his slumped form, her SIG pointed directly at the thick black hair, so similar to other hair of other places, of other people, reminiscent of blood and blistering heat and screams and so much death. She blinked and focused back on the task at hand.

"Mr Jamal, we're federal agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service," began Tony in a professional, no funny-business voice, the one he only ever sported when a drawn gun was involved. "We're here to investigate the money DNAE has been paying into your CitiBank account every week for the past four months. We would like to ask –"

He stopped abruptly when Ziva suddenly and violently hit their suspect across the temple with the butt of her gun, in a swift, practiced movement.

"What did you do that for?" he exclaimed, his face a picture of outraged indignation. "Now we'll have a law suit on our arse and Gibbs will have my head!" _Damn crazy ninja chick with violent impulse issues! She wants us to get fired or something?_

"Better Gibbs than him," she said nonchalantly, re-holstering her weapon and prying a sharp, twenty centimetres long kitchen knife from the unconscious man's hand. Noticing Tony's stunned look, she offered a laconic explanation. "He managed to get it from a shelf under the counter while you were talking."

Tony blanched. Ziva's face, however, remained expressionless as she examined the cooking device with interest. "Not bad, for a kitchen knife. Razor sharp and a good balance," she nodded in approval. "Too bad it will only end up locked in the evidence garage."

Tony looked at her for a moment, befuddled as he often was by her cool exterior, before he managed to reclaim some kind of composure.

"Well, it would probably have been less painful for him to cut my head off, Gibbs can be really inventive when he's pissed. Besides, we DiNozzos have too thick a skull for a mere knife to do us in," he attempted to joke, realising only too late that he'd unwillingly brought up his father again. He sighed. "Come on, let's get Rambo cuffed and in the car, we can read him his rights when he wakes up."

Ziva acquiesced and reached into her back pocket for her NCIS-issued cuffs, turning the man onto his stomach and fastening the restrains around his wrists smoothly.

Tony glanced around the room before turning back to Ziva. "You alright to carry him to the car? I'll be there in a second; I just want to make sure we don't miss anything important."

"He tried to stab you, Tony. We can get a warrant to search his house now, and come back with the whole team," she said in a no-nonsense tone, frowning. Any clues or incriminating material they could uncover without a warrant wouldn't be taken into account in court, and she wasn't about to let a perpetrator go free on administrative grounds, let alone one who'd tried to injure her partner.

Tony looked at her, gauging the validity of her argument and agreed, "Alright, but we call a couple of probies to come pick him up, we wait here for a warrant and start searching the second we get the call. I want this case over and done with, and as soon as possible. Agreed?"

"Agreed. "

"Fine. Now while we're waiting, Zee-vah..." he started as he heaved up Jamal's arm half-way around his shoulders so he could carry him, or rather half-drag, him to the car, "would you mind giving me a hand here?"

Ziva smirked, contemplating pretending to misunderstand the idiom. She decided against it when Tony struggled against the man's weight to retain his balance and hissed « Now, Ziva ! » and she stepped up to help her colleague.

* * *

A.N. Ziva's Russian: _You ungrateful bastard, how can you forget I saved your arse in Stockholm, _if my internet translation is accurate. I triple checked on three different sites, so it shouldn't be too far off mark. Now I know that Ziva doesn't swear on the show, but I figure she can't be that polite with all the tough guys / bad guys she's been in contact with in her assassin years. So in my head, and consequently this story, she swears when she talks to them. Sorry if that offended you.

The story about the way Jamal escaped Iraq was inspired by an Iranian political refugee I know, who fled with her children away from her abusive, extremist husband in Iran. She ended up in France after crossing to Turkey on a rickety boat and being robbed of all her belongings by smugglers. This chapter is dedicated to her and all those who had the strength to stand up for themselves, whatever the consequences.


	17. Chapter 17

When I started this story, my first FFN, I told myself I'd be one of these classy writers who hardly write any author's note and just let readers enjoy their stories. Well, reading back over some chapters this week, I realised that I had completely failed in that respect. Please forgive me. This chapter has some McGee, because I missed him. See? I'm rambling again!

I do not own NCIS.

I love my reviewers and vow to not beg for reviews (too much). I can at least promise I won't threaten not to post if I don't get reviews. Although they inspire me and make me happy!

* * *

**Chapter Seventeen**

Timothy McGee was an early riser. Having grown up as an army brat on a variety of military bases across the US had imbedded in him the firm and inalienable belief that the world belonged to those who got up early and seized the day. Carpe diem and Semper Fidelis, those were his childhood mottos and they still served him well in adulthood. He prided himself on his ability to function to full mental capacity in the first hours of the morning without the cup of strong coffee his co-workers seemed to deem indispensible, and in his efficiency to complete morning tasks before going to work, enabling him to do his laundry or other equally petty chores before the day had actually begun, thus allowing him free and enjoyable evenings. He felt especially pleased with his organizational skills when he witnessed DiNozzo pull one of his dramatic faces at having to wear the same shirt for two days on a case because he hadn't had enough clean ones to stock up his locker with spare clothes, or when Gibbs reached, bleary-eyed for his cup of Starbuck's strongest to sustain him through a paperwork day. Yes, McGee thought of himself as a competent morning man.

Except on difficult-case days.

And today was a difficult-case day. Which explained why when his alarm clock woke up a dark room of stifling exhaustion, it was only to be grabbed by a white appendage sprouting its way out of a navy blue duvet, and thrown across the room in a way that would have made Tony proud. McGee's head suddenly snapped up from its comfortable drooling position on the pillow. _Tony! _He groaned. _I have to get up._ All wishes of endless sleep forgotten, Tim scrambled out of bed and stood disorientated for a moment in his MIT t-shirt and boxers, his hair wildly tussled from his short slumber. _Uh. Shower._

_

* * *

  
_

Gibbs tried to hide a smirk into his paper coffee cup from his position outside MATC when his junior field agent entered the bullpen area, his head turning wildly in his search for his team members in the deserted room. McGee had grown in so many ways, but Gibbs relished the moments when his naïve innocence and eagerness to please re-emerged from his toughening federal agent shell. In that particular instant, with his blinking blue eyes, messy damp hair and features scrunched up with worry, he looked as green to Gibbs as he did when he first transferred from cyber world and Gibbs was glad all of his personality traits hadn't been passed on to the younger man.

"McGee!"

Tim spun around at the interjection, his eyes snapping up to rest on his boss.

"Weren't you supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago?" When his agent stuttered, desperately fumbling for an acceptable answer, he continued, "Don't put away your gear, David and DiNozzo are waiting for us in Anacostia. Take your… strawberry thing, you can use it in the car to find out where Jamal's money goes." He pushed away from the railing he'd been leaning on and started down the stairs. "Let's go!"

"Uh, boss, it's blackberry and I'm actually more of an iPh – "As Timothy McGee scrambled after his fast-pacing, caffeine-saturated boss, grabbing his iPhone as he went, he frantically wondered what the hell his colleagues had found in the mere hours he'd gone home to sleep and if he should seriously consider developing the same unhealthy but evidently useful coffee-habit as his co-workers.

* * *

"Hey boss," greeted Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo with one of his trade-mark grins. "Ziva's searching upstairs and I'm doing this floor. Didn't find anything compromising yet, everything's pretty ordinary, old TV, tired couch. I have to ask Ziva to take a look at those books 'cause, you know, she reads Arabic, but other than that it all looks clean."

Gibbs looked around with concentration, taking in as many details as possible as he surveyed the dim living room and his agent's exhausted figure. "Whaddya expect DiNozzo, a big _I'm a terrorist sign_?" Gibbs scoffed.

"Uh... No boss?"

"Good. Keep looking." Gibbs ordered. He was pleased with his agents' efficiency but wasn't about to let it show. This wasn't the time for cuddly feelings and declarations, not when they were leading a possible terrorist investigation and Tony was in an emotional mess due to his dad's involvement. _Nah, who am I kidding,_ thought Gibbs._ I'd never tell him that even if it were a cold case day._

McGee huffed up the steps to the porch and was having difficulties navigating the equipment he carried through the front door when Gibbs appeared by his side.

"Coffee, McGee," Gibbs recommended. "Go tell Ziva to come downstairs and play librarian, and take over searching the stuff upstairs."

* * *

Abdelkhader Jamal sat in a dimly lit interrogation room, cradling his throbbing forehead. The search of his house had yielded no new information, aside from a prayer mat and a Koran, which wasn't surprising for an Iraqi refugee, leaving the team frustrated and still lacking any proof of terrorism. Tony watched through the one-way mirror as Gibbs entered the room and silently sat down in front of their suspect. He simply looked at him, in what Tony knew to be his imperturbable, disconcerting, steely blue stare. The man lifted his head slowly, defiantly, and held his gaze boldly, ready to fire back and hold his own. He however wasn't given that opportunity, as Gibbs continued to sit wordlessly. After a few minutes, Jamal started to waver, his eyes flitting to the blinking cameras, the mirror, the door, anywhere but at the NCIS agent, and finally gave in.

"What do you want?" he asked in the harsh, rhythmic accent of native Arabic speakers.

Gibbs didn't answer immediately, instead seizing up the obviously nervous man. He narrowed his eyes and offered another question. "Why do you think?"

Jamal seemed at loss of words. His hands retreated from their place on the table and he clasped them between his knees to hide their impeding tremor. He was desperately and unsuccessfully attempting to put up a brave and confident front, and his cockiness rang false when he finally replied. "You are supposed to be the investigator, no?"

_No way is this man a terrorist, not even of the small fish variety, _thought Tony. _Way too nervous._

After another long pause, Gibbs opened his mouth. "Ever heard of a man called DiNozzo?" he questioned curtly.

Jamal's face showed no recognition. "No, I haven't. Can I go now?"

"DNAE?" the Iraqi tensed. "Avon Grüden?"

"No! I want to leave. You have not even arrested me properly, I have done nothing wrong and you didn't tell me what it is I am accused of!" he shouted, growing increasingly agitated and abruptly getting up in the end. "Let me go!" He thrust his cuffed hands into Gibbs' personal space, inches from his face, in a clear demand to be released.

Gibbs was undeterred. "You want to know what you're accused of, eh? Well, let's start with attacking a federal agent. That doesn't look too good on a green card application, you know. Immigration services tend to frown on that kind of stuff." Jamal froze and slumped back into his seat, his head bowed and staring at his bound wrists. "And then of course, there's terrorism."

Jamal looked up, panicked. "Terrorism?" he cried in alarm. "I am not terrorist! I came here to leave the terrorists who were in Iraq and have a good life, and now you are accusing me of being like them?"

"Well if you're not one of them, why do you receive money from armament companies each month?" Gibbs yelled, his icy façade gone. "You gonna tell me it's pocket money from philanthropic companies to a refugee, uh? Philanthropic _armament _companies? Or maybe it's for the hard, invisible work you do for them? 'Cause from the amount you've been receiving, it sure as hell looks like they owed you a lot. Hired assassin, maybe, eh? Who did'ya kill for them? Competitors? Ex-wives? Unhappy clients? That'd explain why you're not in any of the official paper work!"

"Stop! I killed no one!"

"Really?" continued Gibbs just as forcefully. "Doesn't seem that way to me, Jamal! It looks to me like you're involved in dangerous arms deals, large enough to warrant fifty thousand dollars a week! I don't even know why I bother; I'll just charge you with terrorism and let the guys at Guantanamo sort this out." Gibbs got up and headed for the door. "Ya'know, they really don't like fake terrorist refugees over there."

"It was for my family!" Jamal cried, distressed, his eyes popping wide open when he realized what he'd just admitted to.

_Bingo, boss,_ thought Tony. _The ice and flames approach worked again! _

Gibbs waited.

"They have my family," the prostrated man sighed, defeated, "and if you do not let me go, they will kill them."

"Who? Who are they, Jamal?" Gibbs demanded, insistently.

"I don't know!"

* * *

A.N. There, that was this week's chapter. I had no idea how to write an interrogation scene. I hope you enjoyed it. I miss Ducky in this story. Should I kill off a character to involve him into the plot? Don't worry, just kidding - or not!


	18. Chapter 18

**A.N.**I'd like to official state that I'm not Muslim, so please forgive any mistakes when it comes to Muslim customs, even though I try to research them. I do celebrate Aïd-el-Kabir every year with Muslim friends, but that's pretty much all I know about the subject. Well, that and what we were taught in school which pretty much covered the basics, the Prophet, Mecca, the prayer facing Mecca five times a day, the fasting of Ramadan, giving charity to the less fortunate and all that, so I guess I'm not entirely clueless. What I meant was, if there's anything wrong in what I write about Iraqi or Muslim customs, please tell me and I'd be more than happy to correct them. And here I am rambling again. Enjoy the chapter!

**Disclaimer:** Absolutely, officer, I know they don't belong to me. That's why they're bound and gagged in the trunk of my car and not sitting in the front seat next to me : they're not legally mine!

**Chapter Eighteen**

"Whaddya mean, you don't know? How dya know they have your family then?" Gibbs' patient was running thinner by the second and he struggled to keep his irritation from exploding in his voice. _God help me, if he's lying I'll-_

"They called! They called and said they have my family. They knew I had refugee status and green card and if I did not let them use my bank account for their business they would kill my wife and my children!" Jamal shouted, using his hands in chaotic patterns to express his distress and tears were running from his angry eyes.

Gibbs breathed in deeply to calm himself and assess the situation. "You're saying you received a phone call from... Iraqi men?" He waited for Jamal to nod. "...who told you they held your family hostage and threatened to hurt them if you didn't cooperate in their illegal and probably terrorist operations?"

Jamal looked at him hard, insistently."Yes!"

"When?"

"Four months ago, just before Aid Al-Kebir."

Gibbs sighed, then nodded, pushing a pen and a wad of paper towards the cuffed man. "Alright. Write it all down then."

He retrieved a small, silver key from his pocket and unlocked the restrains. Intending to watch Jamal from Observation while he wrote, he opened the door and was about to leave when a last look over his shoulder informed him of the Iraqi's motionless state. He swiftly turned his body back towards the immobile man. "Why aren't you writing?" he asked harshly.

"I do not write English so good, sir," answered Jamal, embarrassed, eyes staring at the blank page.

"Can you write Arabic?" When Jamal acquiesced, Gibbs instructed, "Well write in Arabic. And don't forget any detail." _ I have to send Ziva home. And Tony. _ _Good thing McGee's new program thing can translate that and we won't have to wait five hours to have it translated by the nine-to-fives downstairs. _And with that, he left.

* * *

Gibbs entered the Observation room and stood next to his Senior Field Agent, waiting wordlessly for his impressions that were sure to spill from the over-wrought, verbose man. Exhaustion always allowed Tony even less self-censure than usual.

"You believe him, boss, don't you? I mean, he's pretty believable, if you know what I mean. Unless he's trying to go all family goo on us, hoping to soften us and get on our good side. It could be a decoy! Like that case we had last year, with the woman who'd killed her husband and daughter. She put on a pretty good show as well, the weeping mother and grieving widow; hell, I think even you bought it for a while! Abdelkahder here doesn't look like the type to do that. Not that I think there's a _type_ that screams terrorist, boss, other than the one that has _Death to America_ tattooed across their back, but you know, he looks trust-worthy to me; and terrified of _them_. You notice how in films it's always the heroes, the good people, against _them? _ It doesn't matter who _them_ is, because they're the universal bad guys, the heretics, the murderers, the gangs, the mafia, the aliens invading our planet, the cops, the pirates, the communists, the fascists, the demons, the – "_ Smack_. Tony lowered his arms from the awkward position his excited movements had left them in and grinned at Gibbs."Thank you, boss. I was running out of air here. Plague lungs, you know. They have my words running ahead of me."

Gibbs stared at him pointedly, privately amused and outwardly waiting for him to shut up. When he finally did, he ordered, "DiNozzo, Tell McGee to research Jamal's phone records for incoming calls from Iraq, roughly four months ago – "

"Ah, so you _do_ believe him," Tony interrupted triumphantly, delighted to have reached the same conclusion as his boss.

Gibbs continued, ignoring his interruption. " – then you and Ziva go home, and don't let her talk you out of it."

Tony opened his mouth to protest, an indignant frown on his face. They were finally going somewhere with the case and he was sent _home_?

"If you got complaints too, DiNozzo, I don't want to hear them." These two hadn't slept for forty-two hours, and Gibbs was determined to have them rest, even if he had to force them, no, order them to sleep. He wasn't buying Tony's petulant four-years-old impersonation tonight. "Go!"

As DiNozzo left the darkened room, Gibbs turned back to the one-way mirror and faced his reflection, superimposed on Jamal's figure in the brighter room. He looked through it and studied the Iraqi cautiously. As Tony had pointed out, the family card always strung a cord in the otherwise hardened Marine, and he'd be damned if he let that persuade him to over-look any potential terrorist threat.

* * *

"Ziva! Grab your gear..." Tony announced with forced joviality, beating a drum roll on her cubicle's half-wall, causing her to spring up and slam her top drawer open. "...we're going home!"

Ziva slumped back into her chair, glowering up at him, all sense of urgency gone. "I am not going home. We have a case," she retorted stubbornly.

"Ah, my first instinct too, my charming ninja, but you can either take it from me and go home, or haul your pretty butt down to Observation and let the almighty Gibbs himself order you off NCIS grounds. Which will it be, oh pig-headed one?" Tony beamed his most charming – and in Ziva's opinion most irritating – smile.

"Do not compare me to a pig, Tony, it is not kosher!" snapped Ziva. Before he could explain the idiom's meaning to obnoxious lengths, she asked, "Did he say he ordered us to leave?"

"Searching for a loop-hole, are you? Yes, Zee-vah, it's an order. Geez, do you need a signed doctor's note to get some sleep? 'Cause I'm sure Ducky will be happy to assure you that staying awake and on the job for, I don't know, say, more than forty hours isn't exactly healthy!"

Ziva rolled her eyes and pushed herself out of her chair. "Very well Tony, I will go. No need to pull out the big cannons"

"Guns, Ziva, pull out the big guns," Tony corrected, grinning as he headed to his desk to gather his out-doors clothes and gear.

"That too. Although I think Ducky would be more of a cannon than a gun, considering his great interest in history and Middle Ages European warfare," she replied thoughtfully.

Tony shook his head at her comment as he shrugged on his black, Armani coat and turned to McGee who had been observing them with interest. "You, McSleepyHead, are to look through our downstairs guest's phone record, for calls from Iraq. Around four months ago, but could be some time later or before. He mentioned it was around Aid Al-Katir, whatever that means."

"Aid Al-_Kabir_, Tony," corrected Ziva, by then fully dressed and ready to go. "It is a Muslim holiday, to celebrate Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son to God, or Allah. Just when he was about to spill his son's blood, God supplied a ram to take his place. It is a celebration of faith and obeisance to Allah and is very important for the Muslims."

"Hey, I know that story!" exclaimed Tony. "Abraham; father of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. I'd forgotten about that." He shot Ziva a suspicious glance. "You're not trying to distract me, are you? We're still leaving, even if you're a pit of religious information." He stared sternly at her as he grabbed her elbow and steered her towards the elevator. "Bye Probie!" he yelled back before focusing once more on his partner. "Where did you learn all of that anyway? It's all part of Mossad training, isn't it?"

* * *

Jamal put down the standard, dry ballpoint pen he'd been given to write with and looked back at the pages of tight, curled letters that made so much more sense to him than the American letters, feeling completely drained. He raised his head, reaching up behind his neck in a poor attempt to massage some tension away and stared hard at the mirrored wall that separated Interrogation room One from its adjacent Observation room, to try to convey the fact that he was done _spilling his guts_ as Gibbs would have called it. It turned out to be quite effective since it took the agent only a few seconds to stride in and ask, in an all-business voice, "Are you done?"

Abdelkhader Jamal simply nodded, relieved and terrified to have confided in someone, anyone, even in a silver-haired, steely-eyed, fairly hostile American ex-sniper.

"Good. You have to stay here while we assess and verify it," Gibbs informed him, grabbing the wad of paper. "It shouldn't take more than a few hours. I'll have someone bring you food and water. No pork, right?"

Jamal hunched over in his seat and tried to make his strained, edgy body comfortable against the metal frame. "Yes," he answered, and wondered why he felt like he should be thanking the man who had the power to revoke his refugee status, had threatened to send him to Guantanamo on terrorism charges and had forced out of him a confession that put his whole family's life at risk.

* * *

Abigail Sciuto was doodling tattoo ideas in black ink onto the back of a notebook and trying to summon at least a speck of excitement for the impending results Major Mass Spec was about to reveal. One of the Minor Case Respond Team was investigating a fungus-caused epidemic of nasty coughs at one of the Navy bases around 'd traced back the problemtoa mouldy patch in the corner of a food-storage room and she was tasked with identifying the exact species of the velvety parasite. She didn't really need Major Mass Spec for such a simple analysis, but she figured she might as well keep her babies busy and play around with them. After all, they shouldn't have to be as bored as her. Abby wondered absentmindedly if she could rationalise using the DNA sequencer as well, as it'd been a while since she had studied a fungus genome and mycology had to be more interesting than sitting around waiting for her favourite team to find her something cool to test. Like liquid lead. Or rare strands of viruses. Or even hemochromatosis blood. Abby sighed. The fungus' DNA would have to do for now. She got to her feet, patted down her short skirt and lab coat and started to program the complex machine.

_Ding. _

The forensic scientist swirled around just in time to greet McGee as he stepped into the lab.

"McGee!" exclaimed Abby excitedly, a huge smile spreading from her lips to her whole face. "What have you been up to? You haven't come down here for so long! Do you have something for me? To test, I mean. I've been dying here! Tell me you've got something, anything, cooler than fungus," she ordered.

"Uh... I have five months worth of phone records to cross-reference, and a statement in Arabic that I have to translate," he answered hesitantly. "That's why am here, actually. I'm running back-up checks on all of the team's computers; I thought I'd take the opportunity since Tony and Ziva are home, and Gibbs, uh, Gibbs never uses his PC, but now I need to borrow one of your computer. Is that one free?" he asked, pointing at one of the darkened monitors.

"Sure, go ahead. How's the bossman? I haven't seen him in forever either!" Abby whined.

McGee sighed deeply. "I don't know how Gibbs stays awake after not sleeping for fifty-eight hours," he answered, thoughtful. "All of us were just dropping with weariness at least ten hours ago, but Gibbs is still up and running. Maybe he's got a trial chip inserted in his brain, as part of a confidential research program to make super-marines. He's a bionic man!" McGee grinned slyly, certain he'd get Abby to laugh at his ludicrous theory.

"McGee!" Abby cried indignantly instead, pouting. "Gibbs is not a bionic man. He's 100% Gibbs and 100% magic. Don't go telling me his great Gibbsness comes from experimental electronic equipment!"

McGee's grin grew wider at her passionate rant. "Alright Abby, I believe you," he placated her, laying a hand on her arm. "Now will you help me with the phone records?"

Abby stared at him hard for a minute, before relaxing her narrowed eyes. "Sure Timmy," she said, her indignation soothed by McGee's conciliatory words. "What are we looking for?"

* * *

Doctor Mallard's cheerful whistling resonated on Autopsy's cold walls, ringing with an eerie morbidity he was far too accustomed to notice. He hadn't had a corpse on his operating table for over five days now, save for a poor wretched sailor who'd been poisoned to death by an accidental gas leak while on leave. The blue lips and fingernails had made the cause of death rather unmistakable, although being the thorough Medical Examiner he was known to be, Ducky had performed several blood tests to measure the amount of oxygen sported by the dead soul's haemoglobin. The carbon monoxide had taken the oxygen's place in the sailor's red blood cells and slowly, albeit painlessly, asphyxiated the tissues until his heart had given out. He was quite grateful to find no signs of a struggle on the body, indicating the man had died in his sleep and not at another's hand, the gas-induced drowsiness making him unaware of his imminent demise. Therefore Doctor Mallard, who wasn't known for his appreciation of idleness, whistled happily nevertheless in thanks to any and all higher powers for the lucky souls who hadn't found their way to his temple of death. This may explain why his old friend Gibbs was able to enter the cold room unnoticed, despite the sighing sound of the pressurised doors.

"Hey Duck. Don't hear you whistling very often," Gibbs observed, quirking an eyebrow.

"Ah, Jethro," sighed Ducky contentedly."The aria of the first act of Bizet's opera_ Carmen_, who could resist?"

"Not a lot of works these days, eh doc?" Gibbs asked with a knowing look on his face.

Ducky chuckled. "Let us just say, I have indulged in reading the complete works of one enthralling Charles Dickens again. Far from being a childish read, it is absolutely fascinating to see how profound his texts are. I find I uncover new depths and meanings in his novels and plays every time I have the pleasure of studying one of them and am always amazed that the ninth or tenth time I peruse these fine first editions I still grasp bouts of novelty and clever nineteenth century social and cultural descriptions."

"Yeah I know, Ducky, it's the second time you read these books this year," Gibbs resisted the urge to roll his eyes at his friend's enthusiastic praising of what he considered to be old books from a bygone age.

"Is it already? Well, I have also been rereading Virginia Woolf's books as well, as my nephew Andrew has to study them for his A-levels and he has managed to peak my interest with his passionate analysis of the way the author's fragile mental state influenced the unique stream of consciousness style of her novels. _Othello_ I have always liked, but it is _Mrs_ _Dalloway_ I find utterly spellbinding. You see, she was suffering from –"

"Duck," interrupted Gibbs before Ducky could revert into full lecturer mode. The doctor fell silent and looked up at the silver-haired agent curiously. "Can I borrow one of your slabs for a nap?"

Ducky smiled. "Of course. I was expecting you." He walked over to the side of the room, pulled out a blanket from a condemn refrigerated drawer and handed it to Gibbs who had already heaved himself up onto the table and was making himself comfortable on the cold metal and hard pillow-like dead-head-rest.

Ducky watched as his friend closed his eyes and let his face relax into a peaceful, if somewhat stern, mask_. Now that's a sight I would rather behold any day of the week_, he thought with an indulgent smile. He straightened his bow-tie with the practiced tug and settled at his writing table under the well-placed golden cone of light his desk lamp shone down onto his filing area, opening a large hard back, leather bound book with a look of greedy anticipation.

* * *

**A.N.** Once again, thank you to the wonderful Kakyd who does so much more for me than merely beta every single chapter since chapter four. Btw, this chapter is the longest I've ever written! I had a question for you readers: so you feel a summary of the case up to this chapter would be helpful at the beginning of the next chapter? Thank you to all my reviewers, you make me smiiiile!


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